


Perfect Soldier

by theauthor2010



Category: Glee
Genre: Crossover, Crossover (Dark Angel), Dark Angel - Freeform, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-29
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 31,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theauthor2010/pseuds/theauthor2010
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Evans, X4-471, decided that Lima, Ohio was a safe, innocent and unassuming place to start a new life. One moment changed that assumption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic began Jan 9th and is nearing it's end. Time to be archived.

_Leaping over the fence was hardly a decision at all, it was an instinct. X4-471 took the fence in a single bound. Unlike the X5 escapees from several months earlier, he knew what he was doing. He was halfway through the woods by the time the sirens blared, the voices from far off easily heard. He had waited until the hysteria over the X5 escapes escalated and made the move when the focus was elsewhere and the time was right. He felt bullets fly past him, but they never touched him. He had made a choice long ago, which made escaping no choice at all in the moment. He was still a soldier, but he had chosen this mission for himself._

 _He was hit, once, before he got to safety, but he still never flinched, never looked back._   
_  
He went to the most unassuming town in the world – Lima, Ohio. He took on the name and identity of Sam Evans, a transfer student, sixteen years old - that was it. It was over._

Sam woke up, turned over and looked around. It was not uncommon for him to have dreams of the escape, but still, the dreams made him feel that even though he had escaped Manticore and had not heard from them since that fateful evening, his identity was not exactly something that he could escape. He could never escape the fact that he was not human.

He had gone out on a date with Quinn, just a few nights earlier. She liked him. She was sweet, sensitive and definitely who he was supposed to date, if his infiltration mission was going to be successful. He had not exactly felt a romantic draw to Quinn, but he wasn’t sure if he was capable of such things. Despite not feeling a romantic attraction to Quinn, he had felt emotionally drawn to her. He had told her that he knew what it was like to have a secret and had almost wanted to tell her. Nobody knew the truth about him and sometimes that took a toll on one’s mental processing, to be alone in the world.

She had asked if he was gay. Sam did not know if he was homosexual or not, but as far as his infiltration and human interaction training had taught, homosexuality was not widely acceptable and if he was going to find his new identity as Sam Evans, it was not even a thought he was going to have. Perhaps he was a little bit interested by the openly homosexual Kurt Hummel, but he could learn more about Kurt’s perspective once he established his identity.

He looked down at his cell phone. It was seven-thirty in the morning. He had fallen asleep much like the teenage boy he was portraying, at random and before an appropriate retiring time and now he was going to be late for school. He had definitely begun to slack off, since falling into the role, perfectly. He groaned and leaned back against the bed. He did not have appropriate parental supervision for a boy his age, but he had manipulated the appropriate places and things would be alright. He shut his eyes.

It would be just another day of being hit in the face with ice-cold beverages, despite the fact that he could dodge the slushies and throw them back at his assailants before they blinked once.


	2. Kurt was freedom.

Sam had never imagined that the biggest challenge of all would be avoiding his nature, denying his instincts. He saw Karofsky and Azimio coming from the other side of the hallway, and closed his eyes, forcing his muscles not to spring into action, forcing himself to accept what was coming, which just happened to be a slushie to the face.

“Enjoying glee, fairy boy?”

The ice cold blue liquid splashed into Sam’s face and he manipulated his reaction into just what it was supposed to be. He winced and shuddered, wiping the mess off of his face and glaring at the pair of bullies. Submission was not in his nature at all. He was an animal, made to fight back, to hunt and to kill. Sam never forgot that he was supposed to be a killer, first and foremost. As he walked to the bathroom to clean himself off, Sam imagined how easy it would be to snap both of their necks in a second. He hated to admit to his killer instinct, but something satisfied him about the image of both of the oversized bullies going limp on the floor. He shook it off and went to the sink, splashing cold water onto his face first.

“Seriously? They got you again?”

He turned to find himself face to face with Kurt Hummel. “Yeah,” he said, as all thoughts of brutally murdering dumb human bullies left his mind for a moment. He wiped his face, giving Kurt what he hoped was a charming smile. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

Kurt winced and grabbed some paper towels. “I swear, I will kill whoever brought slushies to McKinley,” he said, wiping at Sam’s forehead.

Sam nodded, slowly. “Yeah, it sucks.”

Kurt shook his head. “I swear it Sam,” he said, pulling a piece of blue goop out of his hair. “You really better be buying proper hair care products, the way you keep getting slushied lately.”

Sam never did understand why Kurt was so obsessed with his hair. Kurt very carefully ran his fingers over the side of Sam’s hair. Sam winced as Kurt got a little bit too close to the back of his neck. He almost moved to push Kurt’s hand away but once again, it was all about avoiding impulses, unless there was real danger at hand. “You avoided a real mess this time,” he said shyly pulling back, just in time.

“Yeah I’m good,” Sam said honestly. “Thank you Kurt.”

“It’s no problem.”

For a moment, Kurt looked a little bit uncomfortable as he stared at Sam. “Sam,” he said softly. “If I got pushy or overbearing during that duet thing, I’m really sorry. You’re a nice guy and I really shouldn’t have done that. I know that I can be a social failure sometime, but I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Sam shook his head. Kurt felt badly. Sam had deduced that Finn had persuaded Kurt to pull back on their duet, but he wasn’t quite sure of the social implications why. Apparently, being close to a gay male was a bad thing, “social suicide,” but Sam did not care about the social nearly as much as he let on. It was all a part of keeping up a comfortable façade and maybe being someone new, someone that he would enjoy being.

“Kurt don’t feel bad,” he said. “I wish I had told Finn to shove off and sang with you anyway. You got a fantastic voice.”

His voice was female, feminine and yet Kurt completely broke the mold. He was not a case that Sam would have learned about in a darkened room at Manticore. Kurt Hummel was not part of any kind of training. Sam understood Quinn, because she was part of what he had been trained. Boys liked pretty girls, teenage males liked popularity and needed it to properly function. It was all very easy to understand when he’d arrived at McKinley but he was starting to realize that what he had been taught for his infiltration missions was how to blend in seamlessly, how to be a walking, talking stereotype.

Kurt was what the outside was all about. Kurt was freedom.

Kurt turned his head, opened his mouth to say something to Sam and something filled the air. The lights in the bathroom flickered once and then went off. Sam zoned in his hearing and sight and could hear loud sounds, crashes, screams and cries. The crashes overtook everything else around them. There was buzzing, crashing, intensity and power failure all around. Sam pulled Kurt by the arm into a bathroom stall, eyes adjusting to the sudden lack of light in an instant. It was early enough that some sunlight streamed into the bathroom window. “Stay right here, Kurt,” he said quickly.

He exited the bathroom stall and jumped up to the window, pulling the bars off without any visible effort. That allowed sunlight to stream brightly into the window, at least. He opened the door to the boy’s room, to find more chaos in the hallways. He could hear a loud booming voice, telling students to get into a classroom. It was quickly overtaken by a female voice, more powerful and demanding.

“Single file, walk, straight into the nearest classroom, now!” That was Coach Sylvester’s voice, he was sure. She had always reminded him of one of the drill sergeants.

Kurt wasn’t very good at listening to orders. Sam had found that most normal human beings weren’t and like he had thought before, Kurt was part of what being outside was about, Kurt was undeniably human. “Sam, what on earth is going on?” he asked, hands on his hips and he looked a little bit on the terrified side.

Sam turned to him. “I have no idea Kurt,” he said softly. “Come with me, let’s go to the choir room.”

The choir room was relatively well lit and across the school. Sam did not know what to do without orders, commands or an action plan, but he had a feeling that he and Kurt needed to go to the place where they were most likely to get some answers. “The choir room?”

“That was an order Kurt. The choir room.”


	3. Dead air

Kurt followed Sam to the choir room without further questioning. They moved fast; well, not as fast as Sam could move, but fast enough that the frantic faculty did not bother with them. When they arrived at the choir room, it was obvious that they were not the only members of their club to think of the idea. Quinn, Rachel and Artie were also in the room. Quinn was clinging to the wheelchair bound boy pretty tightly, obviously scared. Sam knew that the socially acceptable thing to do was comfort her, being that she was the girl that he was supposedly interested in, but held back.

She jumped off of Artie the moment that they entered the room and held onto Sam. “Sam, you’re okay, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice high pitched and her confident demeanor totally crushed. Sam supposed he wasn’t the only one walking around McKinley High School under a complete facade.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I got myself and Kurt down here as fast as possible. It seemed like the right place to be. Have you heard anything?”

Rachel was frantic too, but much more subdued than Sam had learned to expect from Rachel. “Mr. Schuester brought us here,” she said. “Then he went to help the rest of the staff. Nobody has a clue what’s going on but there’s this gigantic car pileup outside and…and something is really wrong.”

Artie spoke up too. “Computers, phones, everything that could possibly be used for contact is dead.”

“Kurt, are you okay?” Sam asked, letting go of Quinn and then looking back to the boy, who had not spoken since Sam had given him a direct order.

Kurt nodded. “I’m fine Sam,” he said, but the look that he gave Sam indicated a level of suspicion that Sam understood.

Sam was confused as to what to do. His every instinct was screaming that he had to take charge, but he had done so well to conceal himself this far. He was a teenage boy; he was a normal teenage boy who was clueless about how to handle an emergency situation, not a trained soldier who had drilled many times over what to do in an emergency. There was always the chance that Manticore would use the town’s mass hysteria to locate the missing X4.

“I can’t get hold of my dads!” Rachel yelled suddenly. “Artie’s right. Phones are dead, nothing’s working at all.”

Kurt, who had been pretty quiet, spoke up once again. “I have to go find my dad,” he said softly.

“The school’s in lockdown Kurt,” Artie objected.

Sam nodded. “We were definitely put into lockdown for a reason,” he said, although the idea of being locked inside of McKinley High School, never mind how easy it would be for him to escape, sent chills through him. “Your dad is going to know to keep himself safe Kurt.”

“He had just got home from the hospital after a serious heart attack, Sam,” Kurt objected. “He’s probably alone, because Carole doesn’t come over until at least noon and has no way of contacting someone for help. This is bad.”

Kurt was right about the situation. Sam was not as well-trained in technology as some of the other soldiers were, but he knew that if cell phones were dead, television signals were out and not so much as a radio broadcast could be managed, this wasn’t just an isolated problem of Lima, Ohio. Something was very wrong and Kurt’s ailing father could very well need some help. “Kurt,” Sam said softly. “I’ll take you to your dad’s place. Rachel, Quinn, Artie, you guys need to stay here until something happens, we get some news, something.”

“What part of ‘the school is in lockdown’ didn’t make sense to you Sam?” Quinn asked, shrilly. “Plus, how can you help Kurt if God knows what is going on out there?”

Sam looked to Kurt and then back to Quinn. “Trust me on this one okay?” he said softly. “Kurt, we’re going to have to go out the window. I don’t want to deal with any teachers who try and stop us.” Sam knew that he could take them down in an instant but he rather liked his façade and not alerting anyone to his real nature was still a key priority.

“The window?” Kurt asked, nearly as shrilly as Quinn.

“Just trust me.”

Before Sam could lift Kurt up to the window though, Mr. Schuester arrived in the room with a few more students, namely, Finn, Brittany and Tina. “Mr. Schue is there any kind of word yet?” Rachel asked, approaching the teacher with wide eyes.

The man looked scared; Sam could sense it in him. “We don’t know yet, Rachel,” he said honestly. “Nothing is working. There are a couple of car accidents in town and people are going crazy outside, robbing and looting, which is why we’re keeping everyone inside until some news shows up. People are going to get killed with the mass hysteria going on outside.”

“It’s like everything electronic spazzed out and stopped,” Artie mumbled.

“I’m going to round up any stray kids I find and bring them back here,” the man said. “I need all of you to stay here, where it’s safe.”

As soon as the man left the room again, Sam jumped up to the window and pulled out the lock. He tried to make it look difficult, but he was sure that didn’t help much. “Kurt, take my hand,” he said, leaning down and reaching a hand out to Kurt. Kurt seemed hesitant for a moment, but then took Sam’s hand. Sam hoisted him up onto the window sill as well, easily.

“What are they doing?” Finn asked Rachel.

“Kurt needs to get to his father,” Rachel said softly. “Sam…I don’t know what’s happening to Sam, honestly.” She turned and pushed her face into Finn’s chest, holding tightly.

He pushed out the window the rest of the way. “It’s not a long jump down,” he said. He did hold Kurt by the arm though when he launched them out of the window. He hit the ground flawlessly. To his surprise, Kurt did as well. “Which way?” Sam asked.

Kurt gestured down the road. He and Sam quickly made their way towards his home. As they walked, Sam used his advanced sight to survey the scene. There were, as they had been told, several car wrecks in the area, including a pileup just in front of the school. People were standing on the streets, hysterical, crying, freaking out. Sam just took Kurt by the hand and led him swiftly to the destination where he needed to be. “How long has your father been out of the hospital Kurt?” Sam asked.

“Only like two weeks Sam,” Kurt said, softly.

“I’m sure he’s going to be fine.”

Sam had to admit that he admired Kurt’s love for his father. Familial love was something that he had no experience with, but it seemed nice. It seemed like a very strong set of emotions, the love for a family member. It was sort of like team loyalty, but Sam was sure that he had it all wrong.

Kurt did not live very far from McKinley. Sam covered Kurt from behind as he rushed to the door, unlocked it and hurried inside. Sam looked behind him to make sure they were not being followed.

Burt Hummel was a friendly looking, but frail man. He slowly got up and threw his arms around Kurt. “Kurt, I was so worried about you. Things are going crazy out there. There’s no television signals, radio signals, nobody’s saying what the hell’s going on. I was so worried.” Kurt held onto his father and Sam lingered back, watching the displays of affection.

“I didn’t want you to worry and trigger another heart attack-“Kurt he said frantically, his breathing coming out in small, shallow bursts. “They have the school in lockdown but I had to come to you. I had to make sure you weren’t sick. I knew Carole wasn’t here yet and you were alone.”

Burt hugged his son tightly. “You should have stayed safe,” he said. “Our next door neighbor, Ms. Harris, the old woman – she said that people were going crazy and that there was all this random violence. You could have been killed.”

“That wouldn’t have happened Mr. Hummel,” Sam said, speaking up. He knew that it was very risky to reveal anything about himself but Kurt already pretty much had it figured out, and he felt a strange loyalty to this family and their safety. “I was with Kurt and he was in no danger of being harmed whatsoever.”

“Who are you?” Burt asked.

“Sam Evans,” he said, and for once the forged identity seemed real enough.


	4. Family

Kurt’s father was a very kind man. He offered Sam a place to stay until things were sorted out and though Sam knew he had to get back to the school to make sure that the rest of his newfound friends were safe, he agreed, at least for the night. Once Kurt was assured that his father was safe, all of his medications were in decent stock and that the house was secured from potential intruders, he pulled Sam aside into the kitchen. Sam sort of knew what was coming.

He looked teary eyed, terrified and a little bit exhausted. “Sam,” he said softly. “Are you…human even?”

Sam swallowed. He had been dying for months to find the person that he could tell his secret to, but now that he was about to tell someone, it intimidated him beyond belief. “Kurt,” he said swallowing, trying to find a way to justify what he was about to tell him. He couldn’t though, so he stopped and mumbled in response to his question, “Mostly.”

“What do you mean mostly?” Kurt asked, freaking out, naturally. He sat down on the kitchen counter and Sam took out one of the chairs and sat down.

“I mean mostly,” he said, honestly. “I don’t know a lot about what went into creating me and those like me, but there’s definitely human there. We’re essentially human, but with a load of DNA from all over, especially felines, I … uh.” He felt lost for words, something that he was not used to by any means.

“Sam, what are you?” Kurt asked, and it was obvious he wanted a much more direct answer.

"I'm a genetically altered soldier," Sam said, deciding that was probably the simplest and most concise way to explain what he was to Kurt. He had honestly spent too many nights awake in bed trying to explain the same thing to himself. It was the question that many of his fellow soldiers were plagued with, when they had a momentary escape from the brutal training – why were they there? Who made them? What was the purpose of living? "I was born in a laboratory in Geneva, made by a government agency called Manticore."

 

"I'm confused," Kurt said quietly and Sam could not blame the young man. Any human who knew about Manticore's inner workings either worked for Manticore or was dead.

"They designed us to be the perfect soldiers," he explained, "perfect killing machines. We had no freedom, no chance at obtaining free will, a forced hive mind and we essentially lived to serve the cruel intentions of others; it was too much and lead to exactly two escapes. The first was a group of X5s, the group created after mine, the next generation if you will. The whole unit attempted escape. It was inspiring. I knew there was a real possibility that the X5s were more advanced, better equipped for escape, despite being children but a few months after they escaped I made my break for it and here I am."

Kurt looked so confused and Sam felt so deeply for him. He got up from where he sat and brushed his hair back, revealing the barcode on the back of his neck. "This is how we were identified at Manticore," he said quietly, explaining to Kurt. He had never imagined what a fantastic feeling it would be to confess everything about his nature. It felt like the world's biggest weight was lifted off of his shoulders. "My designation is X4-471."

“This is insane,” Kurt said and Sam positively shuddered at the feel of one of Kurt’s delicate fingers on his barcode. “Sam, it feels like absolutely everything in the world has turned upside down in one day.”

“It sort of has,” Sam told Kurt, even though he knew that it wasn’t a comfort. “I don’t really know what happened today, but I know that I can help keep you and the rest of our friends safe. I was born a soldier, so whatever is going down right now – I am going to make sure that nothing bad happens to you guys. You guys have really given me a new, human life which means a lot.”

Kurt nodded, swallowing. “Sam, what do you think happened today?”

Sam frowned a little bit. “I’m not sure,” he said. “If it just hit Lima, I’d be worried but I get a strange feeling that it’s not just Lima. Something massive has happened and I don’t think that we quite have a gage on what it is. Cell phones, computers, television signals dropping, this was some kind of massive attack.”

Kurt nodded a little bit.

“Your father’s offer was very kind,” Sam said delicately, “but I am going to return to McKinley as soon as I can, to make sure that everyone is safe.” He had adopted the McKinley High glee club as his unit of sorts and he was not going to let any of them become a fallen soldier. Sam was determined to make sure that New Directions came out of this crisis, whatever it was, alive and well.

Kurt nodded. “I want to go with you,” he said. “They’re my family too Sam.”

Sam looked at Kurt with a mix of bewilderment and adoration. Kurt was a fantastic human. He was capable of loyalty to his unit, stronger than any soldier and Sam had a strange feeling that Kurt loved them like a family. He did not know much about loving a family but he had a feeling that with Kurt in his life, he would learn how. This hysteria, mass chaos, it was unnerving to Sam because it broke the order, but he would not fail his newly self-imposed mission of protecting the ones who had taken care of him.

He nodded. “We will then, Kurt.”


	5. Superman

On their way back to McKinley two days later, to find out how everyone else was faring during the crisis, Sam insisted that they stop at his house. Sam lived in a small suburban house, not that far down the street from Kurt’s. The moment they entered the house, Sam realized something was wrong. He walked through the house, finding that it had been ransacked, some of the major items like the television looted. He noticed Kurt’s horrified face and shook his head. “I really don’t have any valuables that could have been stolen,” he said, “but if I am going to stay with you for awhile, I have some things I cannot possibly live without.”

Sam ducked into the small bathroom and opened up a medicine cabinet. He paused. Shit. His tryptophan supplements were gone, as well as everything else that had been in the cabinet. He breathed in and out slowly, praying that he would be able to get another supply before a seizure took him. The worse thing that could happen in the midst of all this chaos was another seizure. He swallowed up the worry though when Kurt approached.

It was instinct – the seizures were bad, the seizures ended up with X5s dead and autopsied and the X4s and earlier only got by because the newborns took all of their commanding officer’s attention.

“Is everything okay?” Kurt asked.

“No, I’m fine,” he told the boy, quickly. He was fine. He was a good soldier, a strong soldier, a soldier without a genetic weakness.

“Sam, I don’t mean to be offensive, and I hope I’m not hitting a sore spot, but if you were created in a lab – well, did you fake having parents or something?”

Sam nodded slowly in response, still thinking about the missing supplements. “I made a pretty decent sum of money when I was living in Washington,” he explained. “I did a lot of odd jobs, used my abilities to my advantage and secured a pretty good deal of money. When I moved here, it was pretty easy to forge school records and the identities of my parents. I have been running a bit of a manipulation but I’ve run bigger jobs - yeah I live alone.”

“Wow,” Kurt said and Sam could not tell if he was impressed or just plain shocked. “I hope we can find out where everyone is when we get back to McKinley. I know we saw Finn at school but dad is very worried about Finn’s mom. He hasn’t seen or heard from her since the incident, of course, and I think that’s sort of the only reason he let me leave his sight.”

“He’s very protective of you.”

“Yes,” Kurt agreed quietly. “You’re not too used to that are you Sam?”

Sam shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “Family. I get it as a concept Kurt, but I have to admit that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It reminds me a lot of unit loyalty, devotion, but there’s a part of it that I’m not quite getting.”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Kurt admitted, “but you’ll get it.” He looked around the near empty house and then spoke up again. “Why did you choose Lima?” he asked quietly.

Sam was quiet for a moment as he thought about it. “I came upon Lima by mistake,” he said, “but it fit the bill of what I was looking for. It’s a small town, but not so small that a guy stands out. It’s kind of unassuming; nobody talks about it or knows anything about it. It’s a lot less likely that they’ll come looking for me here, than anywhere else in the world.”

“How odd,” Kurt said, giving Sam a smile. “The one thing that everyone who was born and raised in Lima hates about Lima is exactly why it’s the best place for you.”

“Kurt,” he said, once again reminded of the lack of safety, “I think we should head back to McKinley now.”

With that, Sam and Kurt left his house. Sam didn’t even bother to lock the house, because that had not stopped the looters last time. They headed down the street back to the high school. Sam could tell that Kurt was horrified, his eyes stopping on everything that had been turned upside down. Sam had not known much about the outside, aside from the few infiltration missions he had taken on, but he knew that someone like Kurt was much more attached to the world as it once was then he was.

“It’s insane,” Kurt said quietly. They walked pretty fast, so Kurt’s speech was intermingled with his soft breathing. “It’s…just insane. I mean, everything’s stopped working. Only a couple of cars are running down the streets and people have done stupid things, stealing and  
stuff…this is Lima, Ohio. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen here. A teenage pregnancy is the biggest controversy we dig up in Lima.”

Sam nodded. “Well, I think they came in from the major cities when the hysteria hit,” he concluded.

When they arrived at the high school, everything seemed different too. The school was no longer on lockdown. They were allowed right onto the campus, but it looked more like a military compound than a school. That, Sam was familiar with.

Police officers seemed to be everywhere, escorting people down the street. They could see Coach Sylvester immediately, leading students to the police and such. Everybody looked scared. “Let’s go to the choir room,” Sam told Kurt. “Maybe some of ours are still there.”

They quickly ducked past a group of confused and scared freshman and into their precious choir room. Sam was surprised to find that where McKinley had become a compound, the choir room had become their headquarters. There were only a few students there, but they were huddled close together, talking loudly. Their loud speech hushed when Sam and Kurt entered the room.

Artie was the first to speak. “Kurt and Superman are back.”

Sam flinched a tiny bit. “Hey guys,” he said softly. “Is there any word about anything yet?”

“Yeah,” responded the wheelchair bound teen, as he wheeled over to them. “There’s this newsletter circling around saying that all communication is down, but the government thinks that it was a terrorist attack. They’re going to attempt to put up a radio signal in the next couple of days.”

“Is everything okay here?” he asked.

Kurt had pulled away from Sam’s side to pull Mercedes into a tight hug. “Yes, everything’s okay,” Mercedes said from where she was wrapped around Kurt. “A lot of people have gone back to their parents and stuff. I went home but I came back here, because I wanted to keep close to everyone and honestly, the school’s a lot safer with all of the cops centering here.”

Kurt sat down with Mercedes and Sam joined them, perching awkwardly on a seat. “It’s gotta start at least being safe to move around again,” Kurt said. “But, if this was a terrorist thing…that means the whole world is dealing and not just Lima.”

Sam knew that with the attack being such a global thing, the government would sweep in and the whole structure of the United States was going to change. He was not sure what was going on yet but he had the background to know that it was not good. “I’m going to stay with Kurt and his father,” he said outloud. “My parents were away when this hit.”

There was a noise at the door and Quinn came rushing into the choir room. “Sam!” she yelled, throwing her arms around him. Quinn still seemed as petrified as the last time that he saw her, but she seemed to have managed her composure. “Sam, what the hell happened with your Superman act the other day?”

“I actually was going to ask the same thing,” Artie agreed.

Sam shook his head. “Guys, it wasn’t a Superman thing. I just…felt for Kurt, his dad being sick and everything and got him out of here.”

“You freaking pulled a window off of its hinges,” Quinn mumbled.

Sam flexed his arm. “I work out babe, quite a bit,” he said. Even though he had disclosed to Kurt his deepest secrets, he did not feel that he was ready to disclose what he was to the rest of the club. As the rest of the government worked to contain a massive crisis, he had strange feeling that Manticore would use the confusion to try and round up their lost soldiers. He was pretty certain of that.  
Tags: crossover (dark angel), drama, perfect soldier, pg-13, sam/kurt


	6. What he doesn't understand.

Sam and Kurt made sure that everyone in glee was okay. Kurt also found out that Finn had gone back to his mother’s work place, and they were probably both on their way to his father’s now, which brought him immense relief. Sam could see the emotion flash through his eyes when Quinn told him what she learned about Finn. He squeezed Kurt’s shoulder and nodded. “We should probably go back,” he told Kurt. He looked to Quinn. “Quinn, will you be alright?” he asked her softly.

“I’ll be fine Sam,” she said. “I’m going back to my mother’s house today and we’re going to attempt to see if my dad is okay wherever the hell he is. You’re not my boyfriend and evidently not interested so you don’t have to fuss over me, I promise.”

With that, Sam felt a little bit badly. He had not meant to lead Quinn on, or so the common phrase went, but when they had decided to do the duets competition together he was reminded of what was socially acceptable for a teenage boy and had leaned over and attempted to kiss her. Quinn, of course, had freaked out because of her previous experiences but Sam felt like a jerk for it. He had just done what he was supposed to do as far as his training told him – the handsome, talented jock attempted to kiss the beautiful cheerleader because he was just supposed to.

“Please take care of yourself Quinn,” Sam said.

“I always do,” she said.

Kurt looked a little bit confused as the two of them headed back outside. “Are you like, into Quinn or whatever?” he asked softly. “Your duet with her was pretty romantic and stuff. I kind of just assumed you two were starting to date.”

“I-uh-I made a mistake,” Sam said. “I really am still learning about basic human relationships Kurt. It’s been a rough month.” He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. He was still getting used to long hair and being emotional. What a world he was now suddenly thrust into.

“Indeed,” Kurt mumbled, shaking his head.

“Get away from me!”

The sounds completely broke Sam from his thoughts and annoyances. He zoned in and saw the attack going down. “It’s Miss Pillsbury,” Sam told Kurt, surprised. He recognized the guidance counselor immediately, being hassled by a couple of unfamiliar males in the parking lot just outside of the school.

“What the heck, I can’t see anything.”

Sam knew that Kurt wouldn’t be able to see what he saw. Without thinking, Sam rushed down the sidewalk, feet hitting the ground at a rapid rate. His fist made contact with the side of a man’s cheek and he could feel the bone’s crushing underneath his hand. He could have shattered his face in one blow but he did refrain, as much as he could. It felt surprisingly good to do this again. He used the back of his arm to toss the man against the wall and he crumpled up. There was another man, who thought that he could take Sam from behind. Sam ducked and barely touched him, putting him in the same position. It was painfully simple but very pleasurable.

The woman stared in shock. “Sam Evans?” she asked softly. “I…I was headed to get some things out of the car, but it had locked up and then those guys were just…being crazy…oh dear god you have blood on you.”

Sam very gently put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, steering her away from the bloodied men and wiping his other hand on his shirt. He knew that the woman had a neurological condition, something he had studied, and it would be best to keep her from the mess. Luckily, her shock distracted her from what he had done. Just as he steered the woman back towards the school, Kurt appeared.

“Sam? Miss Pillsbury?” he asked. “What happened?”

“There were some thugs messing with her on the way back from her car,” Sam said quietly, giving Kurt a look. “Kurt, let’s get her back inside and to the choir room. Mr. Schue should be there.”

“Okay.”

Sam had to vacate the scene pretty fast. He had really gone easy on the men but still, all the same, he had to. He quickly followed Kurt and the woman inside. By the time he stopped thinking and processing and returned to focusing on the situation at hand, Mr. Schue had the woman wrapped up in a tight hug and was looking at Sam and Kurt funny. “This is a dangerous time,” Sam mumbled, trying to blend in and sound completely natural. “I am going to hurry us back to Kurt’s place so that we don’t get into any trouble ourselves.”

“Okay, take care,” the oblivious educator mumbled.

“You could have said we were walking into a fire pit and Mr. Schue would have said, ‘Okay be careful,’ you know?” Kurt asked, as they walked the opposite way, going around the school to get back to Kurt’s house.

“Why is that?” Sam asked.

Kurt paused, as though he thought that Sam was joking and then smiled. “Because Mr. Schue is in love with Miss Pillsbury,” he said, delicately, like he was explaining the concept to a child. Sam was aware that sometimes inflection indicated that one was speaking below them, to an inferior. He felt a little bit affronted; maybe just a little bit naturally offended by this, but then he realized that on the subject he was an inferior.

"So, he has romantic feelings for her?" Sam asked gently. "Is this deemed appropriate?"

Kurt frowned a little bit. Did Sam say something wrong? Sam turned and looked at Kurt just as he said, "Well what do you mean? Of course it's appropriate. They're both adults and around the same age and stuff. I mean, Miss Pillsbury does have a boyfriend but you take one look at them and you kinda know they're like the one-true-pairing of McKinley High. Sam...You really don't have a clue about relationships and stuff, do you?"

He flinched at the assessment. "I was briefed on teenage relationships for one of my last infiltration missions," he said. "But adult ones are confusing. I don’t really get what’s okay and what isn’t.”

Kurt smiled; his smile in Sam’s general direction very comforting. "They're close to the same," he said. "Except adults are supposed to get what the hell they're doing." They walked towards Kurt’s house at a rather fast pace, at least for Kurt, wanting to avoid any of the chaos around them. “I hope that Finn’s there,” he said as they got up to the house.

Sam didn’t exactly understand why Kurt wanted Finn there. It was another strange part of human relationships that he knew he didn’t understand. Finn did not seem okay with gay people, in Sam’s limited knowledge. He told Sam that people would kill him for singing with a gay guy and that basically translated in Sam’s head to gay people not being okay.

Sam didn’t know much about being gay – just that it wasn’t criminalized but not widely deemed as socially acceptable but what Finn did kind of wasn’t cool.

He supposed it was a bond he had to figure out.

When they entered, Finn was there. He and who Sam assumed to be his mother were sitting on the couch, Kurt’s father sitting in a chair across from them. The man immediately got up and hugged his son. Finn looked at Sam. “Hey dude, Burt said you were gonna stay here,” he said. “Are you okay and everything?”

Sam nodded, slowly. “Yeah, I’m cool,” he said smiling at Finn. “My parents aren’t around so I’m gonna be staying here for a bit, until things get sorted out, but it’s all good.”

To Sam’s surprise, Kurt used Finn’s pausing as an opportunity to rush over and check on the boy. “Are you and your mom both okay Finn?” he asked, halfway hugging him.

Finn nodded. “Yes, we’re fine Kurt. Are you okay? I was like really worried when you took off.”

Kurt and Finn looked at each other for a long moment. “I’m sorry for everything that went down before all this,” Finn mumbled. “It was silly.”

“It’s no big deal Finn,” Kurt said and there was another one of those awkward hugs.

Sam didn’t get a lot about anything.


	7. A hero

Sitting around a small radio with the Hummel-Hudson family, Sam felt oddly comfortable. He felt comfortable despite the fact that they were listening to the one radio station the government had managed to get up and running again, listening to the millionth recap of what was now being called “The Pulse,” an electromagnetic pulse that had been released on the United States of America, successfully wiping out all broadcast signals and anything computerized. It was not implied in the official, sterile broadcast, but Sam knew that the United States as it was known was screwed. He recognized the signs of a military takeover for what they were.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Kurt mumbled softly. “The whole world has been put upside down because of a couple of people with determination to bring the country down.”

“I don’t really get it,” Finn said.

Sam sort of understood what was going on, sort of understood the technology behind an EMP, but he could not speak up. He was not telling anyone but Kurt who he was for now, so he had to remain quiet.

“It is terrifying,” he answered to Kurt.

Sam could not help but think from a very personal standpoint on the issue of The Pulse - it would either lead to Manticore thriving like it never had before or it would lead to the organization's total collapse. Manticore had often been quick to brag about their technology greatly surpassing anything that other organizations or branches of the US government had. Sam knew very well that the crisis, something that humans were taking as a devastating blow, could be devastating to him too. It could mean that genetically altered super soldiers were the norm, rather than a creation that went against everything people knew.

Sam looked from Kurt, to his family. Kurt seemed heavily concerned, his eyes dark, face furrowed up in frustration. Kurt seemed to understand that the magnitude of what was going on was greater than anything he previously understood, even though he didn't understand it. Finn, his near-stepbrother and a friend of both of theirs, just looked confused but the darkness in the room radiated off of him. Their parents - two very well established adults, Sam assumed, had concern written all over their faces.

This was going to be a horrible, hard time and Sam sort of regretted putting this family in danger.

Kurt spoke again, in attempt to change the subject. Sam knew that when faced with an uncomfortable silence, it was a common verbal gesture for someone to "change the subject" to something that was a little more pleasant. "You know Finn," he said. "Miss Pillsbury was attacked outside of the school and Sam totally rescued her. It was fantastic. He's a total hero."

He flashed Sam a smile. Sam swallowed, finding that the attempt had not been successful and he felt more awkward than he had before.

Finn expressed shock, tilting his head to the side. "Really?" he asked. "Dude, what happened? That's awesome."

Sam shook his head. "It wasn't that awesome. There were just some thugs attacking her so I hit them and it scared them off. They were really wimps." He could not let anything on, could not let anyone have even the slightest clue what he had done and the extent of it. “I didn’t think much about it, just reacted. She was obviously caught off guard and really terrified.”

“Where’d you learn fighting skills like that?” Kurt’s father asked, obviously trying to keep into the conversation.

Sam swallowed, his eyes slipping closed as he tried to make up an answer quickly. All he could think about, however, was the real answer to that question.

 _Reindoctrination training was every soldier’s greatest fear. It meant that you had failed, it meant that you were a failure who needed to be reprogrammed. X4-471 was a security risk, a kid with way too many questions, so it didn’t surprise many of his own unit when he was taken away. He asked too many questions, he didn’t keep his stupid mouth shut, and now he was paying the price, learning to be a more efficient soldier. He hesitated before he made that kill. Hesitation was death._

 _His arms were strapped down, his eyes forced wide open. The flashing mantras of Manticore bore into his brain, displayed on the screen in front of him. KILL. He had to make the kill that he was ordered to make without hesitation. The electrodes attached to his skin burned and he regretted every slipping up on a direct order, a direct command to end a life._

 _HESITATION IS DEATH._

 _Hesitation was death. His commanding officer had every right to have him killed, or worse, put in the basement with “them,” for what he had failed to do. He had hesitated and cost Manticore the entire mission. His hesitation to kill was his failure and could have resulted in his death, if not for the mercy of those in charge. MISSION. He was given a mission and was to succeed in that mission. Failure was not an option. HONOR. The only honor and pride that he could hope to have was in death, in killing, in the mission of a soldier. There was nothing else that he could do._

 _A picture displayed in front of him showed the target he had failed to kill. His name was Tim Malone and he was a scientist that had pulled out of his deals with Manticore. He was going to die the next time that he and X4-471 met, or else it would mean the soldier’s death. HESITATION IS DEATH._

 _Flash forward to a week later. X4-471 as a chance at redemption. He stood in front of Tim Malone, the man targeted for death. “All mighty Manticore has sent a child?” Malone asked, shaking his head. This brought a smile to X4-471, because Malone was a low level scientist, working with the birthing of the brand new series. He was a lackey, with no real clearance, but still he has pulled out of the deal. He had no clue that the child in front of him was going to be his death sentence._

 _“You really have no idea what job you’ve been working on, do you Malone?”_

 _With that, X4-471 snapped the man’s neck with no hesitation, redeemed._

Sam blinked away the memories, the ones that had been too hard to escape in that moment. “I w-was really big into martial arts and stuff when I was a kid,” Sam told Kurt’s father, quickly, stuttering. “I was a b-black belt and all. It just all kind of came flooding back to me when I saw her in trouble, and…and like Kurt said, they were wimps. Once they realized they weren’t just picking on an isolated, shocked woman, they backed off.”

Sam knew that everyone in the room was staring at him and honestly they had a good reason to be staring. It had been a long time since he had last had a flashback to the days of Manticore. It was uncomfortable to know that those memories were still lodged deep into his brain and honestly, he was still a killer, even though he had escaped those who taught him to be what he was.

“Are you alright honey?” Finn’s mother asked and Sam blinked.

No, he wasn’t alright, but he could use that as an excuse right?

“I’m not feeling well,” Sam admitted. “I think it’s all the shock. May I…be excused?”

He hurried down to Kurt’s bedroom as fast as he possibly could.


	8. Electricity

Sam was only alone for a few minutes when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He jerked around, to find Kurt walking down the stairs, looking guilty. “I don’t mean to intrude,” Kurt said, apologetically, “but my family was really worried so they sent me down to make sure that you were okay.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Sam said, a little bit surprised that the people upstairs were worrying about him. It seemed odd that they would worry about someone who was a stranger, an acquaintance at best, at least on Finn’s part.

Kurt walked the rest of the way down the stairs and sat down on the bed in the middle of the room. “What happened up there?” he asked Sam.

Sam gave Kurt his best smile. “Nothing serious,” he said, shaking his head and sitting down next to the other young man. “I just had some really bad memories for a second there and had to be alone to shake them off.”

Kurt put his arm around Sam, a gesture that Sam recognized as comforting. He moved towards it almost naturally, surprised at the instinct to lean a little bit closer to Kurt’s side. The comfort was nice, natural and it made Sam feel very comforted, so it must be an efficient means of comfort. “Thank you Kurt,” he mumbled low, yawning, partially from just how exhausted he was. He was made to go for long periods of unease, but it was nice to be comforted and feel at ease. It was weird. Sam had experienced effective attempts at human interaction and comfort from others, but none stilled him or affected him as much as Kurt’s simple gesture. Kurt was an extraordinary human in one way or another. Sam could not quite understand it.

Sam briefly wondered if he had an attraction to Kurt. People at school had pegged him for having an attraction to men, Kurt specifically, right away, so maybe there was some scientific basis for that. Sam wondered if Kurt would be opposed to testing the theory that was so prominent among others. He wondered if it was at all socially appropriate to test such a theory.

“Kurt?” he asked softly.

“Yes Sam?” Kurt asked, pulling away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make things weird. You just looked so…broken.”

Sam shook his head, wishing to quickly dispel that idea. Did Kurt have a lot of experience with making things weird, as he put it? “It was nice Kurt. I just wanted to ask you a question. Or well, I actually wanted to ask you if you would be opposed to me trying something.”

“What Sam?”

Sam leaned down and pressed his lips to Kurt’s. Kissing was something that he had only done once before, during a mission. It had almost been twice, but Quinn had not been at all receptive to the idea. Sam kissed Kurt gently, feeling Kurt respond by brushing his lips against Sam’s as well. It was obvious that Kurt liked kissing Sam and oh, Sam liked kissing Kurt too. Yes, he most definitely enjoyed kissing Kurt.

He pulled back when he felt it was only decent and felt heat rise in his cheeks. It felt sort of like when a female went into her heat cycle and was too close, and those desires took over, except it wasn’t entirely sexual. He recognized it as the human convention of blushing. Kurt was making him blush. “I’m sorry if that was out of line,” Sam said, his breathing a little bit labored. “I just really wanted to test a theory and I really…wanted to kiss you.”

Kurt looked shocked, affronted but behind that there was part of Kurt that was a little bit pleased, Sam could detect that part hiding underneath his outburst of emotions. “Sam!” he yelled out. “What kind of theory involves kissing a guy who’s never been kissed?”

“Ever since I came to McKinley,” Sam mumbled, “people, including you, kept saying that I was gay. I wanted to see if kissing you felt right. It…it really did feel nice and it made all of the horrible stuff that was in my head earlier kind of just go away.”

“I thought you weren’t gay.”

Sam chuckled a little bit, looking down at the ground. “I don’t have a clue what I am,” he told Kurt. “All I know is that I’m not a soldier, I’m not a killer and I’m not anyone’s tool. I was that, Kurt and I never, ever want to be that again. I may be gay though, because I really liked kissing you and I really wanted to do it for a little while now. I just didn’t get why everyone thought that was such madness.”

Kurt smiled, anxiously. “I kinda liked kissing you,” he agreed. “But since first kisses are supposed to be special, so can you _please_ kiss me again without it being a way to test a theory?”

Sam was quick to oblige, leaning down and pressing his lips back to Kurt’s. He tasted sweet and made a cute little sound when the kiss deepened a little. When it was over, Kurt pulled away and looked down at his feet. He had the sweetest smile on his face and Sam knew that he had done the right thing in deciding to kiss Kurt.

“You have a lot to discover about your identity,” Kurt told Sam, stammering over his words. “But…it’s a new world, you know? It’s the perfect time.”

Sam nodded. It was the perfect time to become human. He leaned back, a little bit nervous about the way Kurt made him feel. His face was so hot. It was almost too hot. In fact, this having an attraction to someone felt a lot like something else. He closed his eyes and leaned back, falling to the ground, collapsing.

Sam's body convulsed, the violent jerking almost electrical in nature, the way that his whole body moved with it. It was like every electrical impulse in his body was lit up, his body shaking, violently. He twitched and turned, his eyes closed and his breathing erratic. His hands curled into fists and Sam seemed to be trying to stop it, but he couldn't. Kurt took Sam by the hand and held his jerking hands still. "Sam," he said softly, frantically. "Sam!"

"M-m-my pills," Sam said. "Tryptophan. I c-couldn't get them and m-medical supply is short."

He could hear the rustling above him and Kurt yelling for his parents but he could not stop shaking the seizure overtaking his whole body.

 _“Please stop shaking, please, please,” mumbled X4-214, standing next to his bed and holding his hand, tightly. “Stop shaking or they’ll take you away like they did that X5 boy. You know what happens when you show your weakness. You’re not weak. You can make it stop if you want to.”_

 _His entire body convulsed, his teeth chattering. He bit down on his tongue and tasted blood. It had to stop. It had to stop. Everyone knew the rumors about what had happened to the X5 boy._

 _“T-they s-stopped g-giving us the med-medicine.”_

 _It was a sad but true fact. With many new inventions coming to light, Manticore had forgotten about the X4 series. He had even heard one of the commanding officers making a joke about getting rid of them._

 _“With the X5s, especially the ones like my kids,” said Donald Lydecker, “we’ll be eradicating all prior series before you know it.”_

 _He shook violently, trying to make it stop. It would not stop._

 _He did not know how long passed until a woman entered the room, short, stout and wearing a white labcoat. “It’s okay dear,” she said low. “Here, you gotta swallow. Swallow this and I promise it’ll stop. It’s just a neurological mistake, you just need tryptophan. I told them to start adding more to your diets, I told them. Here.”_

“Tryptophan,” he groaned aloud. “M-my pills. Went m-missing. Milk can c-calm it for a bit, b-but need…”

It got worse and Sam couldn’t speak.


	9. Search and retrieval

Kurt looked at Sam, certain that the horror was written all over his face. The world was in some kind of horrible chaos, the cute new kid he had fallen for was a mutant of some kind, and oh yeah, kissing Kurt had led to some kind of horrific seizure for him. Kurt felt like he was living in a freaking comic book. It was ridiculous and he wasn’t at his best under pressure.

“Sam?” he asked softly, thinking about what he said. “Milk?”

Sam nodded, or at least Kurt thought he did, amidst all of his violent shaking.

His father, Carole and Finn hurried down the stairs at his call and Kurt looked at them. “Something’s really wrong with Sam,” he said, panicked. “He said that milk can calm it down. Finn, get some.” Finn stood semi-paralyzed, halfway down the staircase and then ran back, nearly running into their parents. His father and Carole headed down the stairs and Carole immediately dropped to her knees at Sam’s side.

“What happened, Kurt?” she asked gently, tilting Sam’s head back.

Kurt shook his head, frantically. How did he explain this without revealing Sam’s secrets? How did he help Sam? Oh god, how did he get the horrifying shaking to stop. “I don’t know!” he yelled. “He said that it’s a problem he has but his meds were missing.”

Carole very gently moved Sam to the side, blocking his head from the dresser next to it. “He’s having a seizure of some kind. Did he ever tell you he was epileptic or anything like that?”

Finn returned with a half empty carton of milk. “Here Kurt…I don’t get…what’s going on?”

Kurt leaned close to Sam’s convulsing body. “Sam, here, I have milk. You gotta try to drink it.”

Kurt opened the carton of milk and very gently tipped it back to Sam’s mouth. Sam was convulsing too hard and milk spilled down the front of his shirt. Kurt managed to get him to drink a little, coaxing lightly. He could hear his father say, “what the hell’s milk gonna do?” and he was honestly wondering the same thing, but he tried to get Sam to force down as much as he could. Sam swallowed once, harshly, which seemed to help the shaking.

“The d-dosage isn’t enough, but it can help some…is there a – there’s a drug store r-right? S-sometimes they have…”

Sam was at least coherent enough to say those words. “Yeah,” Finn said quickly. “Kurt, we can get to the drug store but it may be shut down.”

“I have a feeling that’s not going to be a problem,” Kurt said darkly. “Sam, my dad and Carole are going to take care of you, get you down onto the bed okay? Finn and I are going to go to the drug store and see what we can find. Just hold on.”

“H-hurry Kurt,” Sam mumbled, clinging to Carole’s arm. On cue, the woman helped him up and towards the bed. She and Burt got Sam sitting before Kurt took Finn’s hand and took off.

Finn followed Kurt down the street. Kurt appreciated Finn’s loyalty to him, especially when he had no idea what the hell he was doing. The streets were a little bit quiet, as news about The Pulse circulated through Ohio, and probably the rest of the world – though connection was completely cut off. It actually floored Kurt, how much of their normal lives had been taken but he truly believed they were still shell shocked from the gigantic bomb that had been dropped upon them. The actual grief would come later, when things didn’t feel so hysterical. Plus, Kurt sort of had a transgenic mutant soldier on his hands who was having some kind of seizure.

“Faster Finn,” Kurt mumbled.

He was glad that they both were pretty fast, because they got to the drug store pretty fast. Thompson Drug was kind of a staple of the town. It was kind of shocking to see it with broken glass windows and a low alarm still blaring. “We’re about to do something highly illegal, aren’t we?” Finn asked, swallowing deeply.

“I don’t think there are laws at the moment,” Kurt said as he walked in through the slightly ajar automatic door.

It was madness, shelves toppled over, their contents strewn across the floor. Kurt looked around and then pulled Finn towards the remainder of the medicine aisle. There were a small supply of supplements but the entire aisle had been picked through. He started digging through fallen bottles. What were they going to do if they didn’t have the exact supplement that Sam needed? They couldn’t leave him there, shaking desperately like that. These things might kill him or something, Kurt had no idea. “Finn, what do we do?” he asked as they shifted through everything. “What do people even use this stuff for?”

Finn shook his head, digging around in the next aisle over. “I have no clue Kurt!” he called back.

Kurt was getting panicked. He followed the aisle along to the pharmacy.

“What are we looking for again Kurt?”

“Tryptophan.”

“I found it,” Finn said and Kurt felt the strongest wave of relief ever. Oh god. He quickly crossed over to where Finn was and found that Finn was holding a bottle of the supplement. Apparently it was used to help people sleep and for natural treatment of depression. Well, it was what Sam needs.

Kurt took it from his stepbrother. “Let’s go,” he said, but hesitated for a moment and then walked up to the front of the store and slipped ten dollars into the drawer under the register. The world wasn’t going to stay broken.

They got back home in record time. Sam and their parents were still in the basement. Carole shot them a desperate look from where she sat at Sam’s side. “They’re going to t-t-t-t-take me away,” Sam ranted, and she pat his hair lightly.

“Now, now honey, nobody’s taking you anywhere,” she assured, low.

Kurt was opening the bottle as soon as he started running down the stairs. Burt looked up at his son. “Did you get it?” he asked Kurt.

Kurt nodded. “We did.”

He very quickly urged Sam to take the pill, pressing it to his lips. His dad handed him a bottle of water and he got Sam to swallow. He sighed in total relief.


	10. A few good things

Sam started to recover from his seizure pretty quickly after getting the needed supplements, but still he looked exhausted, lying in Kurt’s bed. He looked over at Burt and Carole, awkwardly assessing the adults. “Um, I am very, very grateful for you taking care of me,” he said, his words just plain uncomfortable. Kurt could tell by looking at Sam that he was not in a place he was familiar with but trying his hardest to blend in. Sam Evans was not as good at blending in as he thought he was. “Finn and Kurt were very awesome to go find the pills for me, and I… I’ve never really had anyone take care of me before, so thank you, so much.”

“It’s what parents do honey,” Carole said and Kurt could tell that she was starting to realize that Sam was not all he seemed. Her eyes betrayed her skepticism, worry and concern for this strange teenager in her house. “Don’t worry about it, and don’t strain yourself yet.”

“It’ll get better now,” Sam assured her, all of them, shaking his head from side to side slowly, almost as if testing out his body. “It always gets better after the medicine.”

“You never had parents to take care of you, kid?” Burt finally asked and Kurt had to wince at his father. He was extremely blunt. Kurt had known that after the seizure, the secret that Sam shared with him would come out to his whole family, but he hadn’t expected it to all spill that soon.

Sam shook his head, eyes closed. “No sir,” he said, seriously. “I don’t have parents. I was born in a laboratory.”

Kurt waited for the outbursts that would come from that one. Finn looked confused and mumbled, “What?” under his breath, Carole was silent and his dad looked at Sam with a skeptical expression.

Sam had a half-smile on his face, like he knew how absurd his story must have sounded to the rest of them. “I mean, I was born, so I’m not like a cyborg or anything,” he said, still obviously weak from the seizure. “I’m part of a government project to create genetically enhanced super soldiers. I’m an X-4, a feline-human combination creature designed for perfection, well, aside from the fact that our brains don’t spit out enough serotonin.”

Kurt knew that when he was exhausted, he could babble and he was pretty sure that was what was happening to Sam. Sam was just going on and on about these things that were pretty much unbelievable. “Did you know that toward the end, they conveniently forgot to give us our medicine sometimes?” he asked, with a dazed smile. “It was my theory that they were trying to phase out every series before the X-5 series. We were costing more money than we were earning. The X-5s are a hell of a lot stronger than we are, a lot more durable and the oldest one is like thirteen now.”

“Sam,” Kurt mumbled. “You’re really exhausted and I don’t think that any of us are going to absorb this after the day we had.” Kurt could feel his family’s eyes on him. “We never believed that terrorists could take out the United States,” he mumbled, quietly. “Or that we’d have to go to a broken down drug store in order to get supplements for our violently seizing and not quite average friend, right? We’re going to have to start being a little less skeptical soon.”

Sam nodded and turned around, showing them his barcode.

“Dude, you are something special, aren’t you?” Finn asked.

Sam nodded, sitting up. His eyes seemed a bit clearer, so maybe he was coming to. “The seizures were a big mistake on Manticore’s part,” he said, shaking his head. “Apparently, something they did in the process of splicing the DNA together made it so that all of the X-series have brains that don’t produce the right amount of serotonin. When it gets low, seizures happen. The tryptophan naturally produces more, helps regulate the freaked out levels.”

He looked at Finn and Kurt, yawning and opening his eyes. “You guys saved my life.”

Kurt looked at Finn and then at their parents, who were tenser than ever. Carole coughed. “I’m going to go cook dinner,” she said. “This has been an exhausting day and I can’t remember the last time you boys ate. Burt, please come with me.”

They were up the stairs pretty fast. Kurt knew that they had a lot to process, but was glad that they left Kurt, Finn and Sam alone. It gave him some time to process the mile a minute thoughts that were going through his head, without worrying about causing his father another heart attack or laying on the shock too strong for any of them.

“So, you’re like a total Superman,” Finn said, breaking the quiet. “No wonder you always kicked ass at football.”

Sam smiled, probably as appreciative of the comment and the tension breaker as Kurt was. “Nah,” he said. “I kicked your ass at football while still using about ten percent of my strength. I could split a football in two, you know?”

“Hey I never said you kicked my-“

Sam grinned. “I know.”

Kurt yawned, exhausted himself. “Super human or no, boys are still boys, huh?” he asked, looking from Finn to Sam.

After awhile of having Finn and Sam banter back and forth like typical American teenage boys, Kurt leaned up close to Sam. “You know,” Sam said, alerted of Kurt’s presence again, “I don’t think having a seizure is an appropriate response to kissing someone. I am really sorry about that Kurt.”

Kurt blushed.

Finn looked at the two of them. “Kurt, Sam, did you guys kiss?”

Sam nodded. “I kissed Kurt. It was awesome, and then my messed up DNA freaked out,” he said.

Kurt grinned. Although he loved Finn, he was kind of glad that he got the chance to show him up for his behavior. He leaned over and kissed Sam on the cheek, before he looked at Finn. Carole called him up to dinner.

They were pretending to be normal, things were crazy, but there were a few good things left.


	11. Trouble

Things in the world and in Lima began to function again, slowly, but it was obvious to everyone with eyes that the world was not going to be the same again for a long time - if ever. Sam obviously noticed that people were depressed and scared but he could not fully appreciate the sum of their fears because, well, this was a lot better than the place he had escaped from. The words were definitely flying around: depression, financial ruin, poverty, corruption, destruction. Sam understood the concepts but he did not understand the magnitude of the changes, because he was finally free. It may have been the end of the world as the common people knew it, but not to Sam.

After a few weeks, school at McKinley resumed again; although, it really was was more of a command post and a way to account for underage citizens than an actual place of education. The militaristic feel made Sam incredibly nervous, and he was glad when he could steal a little peace, taking off into the choir room where the glee kids still stuck together.

“Sam,” Quinn said quickly, when he walked into the room. Quinn looked different since The Pulse, really. She was more ragged than before and it was obvious that the changes were particularly hard on her and her family. “Finn said that you saved Miss Pillsbury from getting mugged a few weeks ago, right?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“A few days ago, before McKinley got set back up,” she said softly, “there was a girl here looking for you. She was maybe twelve at most, looking for a boy who fended off some attackers in an unusual way. I think she was referring to you. She couldn’t tell me what you looked like, but that there was something odd about you. There is most definitely something odd about you.”

Sam shot Kurt a look over Quinn’s shoulder. “Interesting,” he said. “Thanks for telling me that Quinn. I’ll keep an eye out. Also, there’s really nothing odd about me.”

“Hmph,” the girl answered, before going on to something else.

“Maybe it was my cousin,” Sam answered, trying to make things sound more comfortable, as he settled down in a seat next to Kurt’s, slipping an arm around his shoulders. Sam was trying to display the fact that he and Kurt were interested in each other and he loved the way that it made Kurt blush, his face freezing up in some kind of cute, happy form of common embarrassment. “I have a lot of cousins.”

Honestly, Sam was terrified, but he tried to focus on Kurt because he could not talk about the terror until he was in a safe spot. The Manticore X5s were around ten to thirteen years of age and this girl had specifically mentioned a moment when Sam may have exposed some of his skills. It was very likely that Manticore had finally caught up with him. His stomach dropped into his throat when he thought about Kurt and his new friends being exposed to Manticore and their chaotic madness, all because of him. He recognized the emotions of guilt, worry, sorrow and protectiveness. He frowned and leaned a little closer to Kurt. “We have to talk,” he mumbled, because he could not hold it in.

“Bathroom,” Kurt said, taking his hand.

When they safely made it down the hall past the insane amount of police officers and teachers, Sam looked at Kurt. “Kurt, I’m worried,” he said softly.

“About what Quinn said?” he asked. “Do you know who she is?”

Sam shook his head. “No,” he mumbled. “I don’t know who she is, but I don’t like the description. She said the girl who asked for me was about twelve and mentioned how I attacked those guys. The X5 series, the series that came after mine, they were the ones that Manticore put their time and money behind. I’m freaked out that they’re coming for me again Kurt. I may have to…go or something, I don’t know, I…I can’t let myself be caught again and I can’t let any of you get involved with Manticore. You’d end up dead.”

Kurt looked at Sam and he seemed to be trying to take in what Sam was saying. “Let’s go back to your house after school,” he said. “Maybe we can find some clues there. If they’re onto you then they may have visited your house.”

Sam looked at Kurt. The kid was a little bit insane and determined to get himself killed it seemed, but it was a good idea. Sam had to know who was onto him, how long they had been tracking him and how far away he had to get to keep them from getting their grip on him. Sam did not want to think about leaving Lima. He had come here to find his peace, a place where he could blend in with the normal human population and live out a life that was not ruled by someone else. He could not give up Kurt and his friends without some kind of fight. “Alright.”

Sam’s house had been vandalized over the past weeks, but it was nothing focused to him, just the general chaos of the world that they had lived in. He walked inside to find that anything that was left had been looted.

It was pretty easy to find the girl who had been looking for him though, because she was sitting in the front room, huddled in a corner. She immediately sprung to her feet when they entered. Her hair was short; almost shoulder length, but it didn’t fool Sam. He had grown out his hair the moment that he escaped Manticore, in order to hide the barcode and blend in to the general population.

The pretty child was definitely an X5.

“State your designation soldier,” Sam said, instantly jumping back into the role of a commanding officer, a role that was comfortable and yet terrifying at the same time.

The girl looked him in the eyes. “So, they sent an X4 to some middle-of-nowhere town to get us back?” she asked, crossing her arms. “I’m not a number, soldier. My name is Jondy and I’m a person.”

Sam put himself between the small child and Kurt, immediately. Though she looked like nothing more than an innocent girl of maybe ten or eleven, Sam knew that the X5s were killing machines and even stronger than their predecessors. He was definitely afraid of the damage that she could do; however, it seemed that she was one of the escaped X5s, the ones that Sam regarded as his heroes and his inspiration for escaping himself.

“You’re one of the ’09 escapees,” he said softly.

“Don’t play dumb,” she said, crossing her arms. Apparently she had some very good infiltration training because she played up the child-with-an-attitude role very well.

Sam knew that she could very well be playing the role of one of the escaped X5s. Manticore knew very well that Sam was out there and that if he met one of the escaped X5s, he would think that he had some kind of alliance. “How do I know you’re really one of the escaped X5s?” he asked, seriously. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of Manticore trick?”

“What would they be tricking you for?” she asked. “I hear that a mysterious guy with crazy powers is around attacking muggers and of course, I think that it’s a Manticore agent assigned to get me.”

“I think the same when a little girl comes to my school looking for me,” Sam said in quick response.

“What’s going on?” Kurt asked, softly, urgently. Sam eased his protective stance a little and shot Kurt a comforting look.

“She’s X5,” Sam said, staring down the young girl.

“He’s X4,” she retaliated, quickly.

“I escaped five months after the infamous ’09 escape,” he said. If she was working for Manticore then she knew this, so it was no use keeping the information secret.

“If you are an escapee,” she said, considering his words, “then you are as dumb as hell. I’ve picked up on Manticore activity in various parts of Ohio. What the hell were you doing taking down a bunch of muggers on a public street?”

“Someone was in trouble,” Sam said quickly.

“Was she an important target?” the girl asked, skeptically.

“No,” Sam mumbled, confused by everything that was going on.

“Fine, I believe you,” Jondy said quickly. “For today, you can be an X4 escapee that none of us have ever heard of, but you lay low and do not lead to risk to the others that are out there.”

“I’m just trying to live a normal life.”

“You think you can live a normal life?”

With that, the X5 girl took off out the broken open window, leaving Kurt and Sam staring at each other and looking more confused than ever.

“She was an X5,” Sam explained, sitting down on the floor. “Five months before I escaped there was a unit of X5s that escaped. Some made it and some didn’t, but they were my inspiration for escaping. I knew that if they could do it, then I could, and that I wasn’t the only soldier at Manticore thinking about freedom.”

“What does this all mean?” Kurt asked, sinking down beside him.

“I think that it means there’s a lot of trouble in the future.”


	12. Am I supposed to be sexually aroused?

  
Kissing was very nice. Before his escape, Sam had only known that a kiss was a common form of affectionate expression. That had been why he tried to kiss Quinn when they got close. Now, Sam was starting to realize that kissing had a lot of complexities that they were not going to teach him at Manticore. Kissing sent shocks of excitement to his heart and a few shockwaves elsewhere. He blushed, a hand on Kurt’s cheek as he realized that he had an erection. It reminded him of when the females of his unit went into heat and he couldn’t help respond to them. Manticore had always treated that as a nuisance that could be suppressed with hormone pills.

“I think this is getting too intense,” he said. “Am I supposed to be sexually aroused?”

Kurt’s reaction to his uncensored outburst was to burst out in hysterical laughter, practically doubling over, as if in pain. “Oh my god. Did you…I…uh did you just ask me that?” he choked out, absolutely giggling. “Oh my god, Sam, seriously!”

“It’s not funny,” he said. “We’re not having sex but my body is…”

“Super soldier or not, you have the body of a sixteen year old boy,” Kurt said, teasing but quickly composing himself at Sam’s discomfort and kissing his cheek. “Don’t worry about it Sam. It’s normal.”

“I like kissing,” Sam mumbled, face red. “I like it a lot.”

“Me too,” Kurt said, leaning back up and planting another kiss on Sam’s lips. “I wish I had done it more before, but hey, I didn’t know you yet.” Kurt slid up close until he was practically on top of Sam. He seriously thought that he was going to die from the arousal and made a sound of protest. Kurt was an incredibly evil but amazing human being.

Finn walked into the room at that moment.

“Woah, dudes,” he said, turning himself around. “I’ll come back later.”

“No,” Sam said, grabbing one of Kurt’s many pillows and putting it on his lap. “Um. Did you need something?”

Finn shook his head. “Nevermind dude,” he said, face bright red.

“Did you…happen to notice anything suspicious?” Sam asked Finn. As much as he was into the moment and being with Kurt, he could not get the X5 girl out of his head. He knew that he was in danger and in turn, the people closest to him were in danger. He did not want anything to happen to the family who had done so much for him. “I’m a little worried.”

“No I haven’t,” Finn said, still lingering near the door with an expression that said he really wanted to leave the room.

“We’re here for you, no matter what comes up,” Kurt said, looking to Finn and then back to Sam. He seemed very embarrassed. Sam knew that Finn walking in on them in that situation was embarrassing but really he was just annoyed that it drew his thoughts back to less than pleasant things.

“I really don’t want to put you guys at risk,” Sam said, seriously.

He spent the rest of the day worrying about putting Kurt, Finn and their wonderful parents at risk. They had taken him in and made him a part of their family in the midst of the disaster that was The Pulse and he owed them everything. That night, the urge to figure out what was going on and assess how much danger the Hummel-Hudson family was in overtook everything else, even his new feelings for Kurt.

He went out on a scouting mission to get himself some information.

The town of Lima, Ohio had been the closest place that Sam decided to settle once he was free. This was because it was small, but not too small, safe and unassuming. A lot had changed since he had chosen this place for his new home. The town had always been small but it had not been primitive in the slightest. Now, the walls were all barred or had police tape crossing broken windows. Armed guards stood at street corners in a way that reminded him of the guards at Manticore.

It was a creepy place and he knew that he was making himself even more of a suspicious character by walking around at night. It was cold, as was usual in this area in November, but it was bearable. Sam’s body temperature was always much higher than that of a normal human. He scouted the outskirts of Lima, on the East Side. He used his full strength to get there and was there in moments. He knew that if Manticore was patrolling they would keep as far from any inhabitants as possible.

Sam expected to find Manticore activity but when he found a familiar unmarked van, locating it from a mile away, his stomach dropped and his blood went colder than the air outside. He relaxed and listened in as best as he could. “Agent Sandoval here,” a man said, into some kind of communication device. Sam quickly marveled over the fact that he had a communication device of any kind in a post-Pulse world, as they were now calling it, but he knew that this was Manticore.

He knew Robert Sandoval, one of Manticore’s commanding officers. “There are no signs of any suspicious activity in this area, so far,” he said clearly, his voice crisp and cool. “Deck? Deck’s off in California searching for his ‘kids.’ I just want to take care of this X4 escapee…” He paused. “No, my orders are to shoot to kill. The X4s are a waste of genetic material, just like their predecessors. He’ll be dead the moment we catch him.”

Waste of genetic material, was he?

Sam watched, eyes narrowed. It was kind of interesting. His biggest fear was one day being shipped back to Manticore and now he knew that would never happen. He was going to be free or die. Sam couldn’t help it as his mind went back, further.  
 _  
The X4 had a body that was several times stronger than that of a normal man. He was fast, strong and capable, even though he was only ten years old. He was being pushed to his breaking point in training, harder, faster._

 _“X5-471, give it more.”_

 _He couldn’t. He couldn’t._

 _“They’re a waste, these X4s. The next series are toddlers and work twice as efficiently.”_

Sam snapped out of it and watched very closely. “Do we even know that he’s here, Agent Sandoval?” a man asked. He was pretty low level. Sam could tell that he lacked the clearance of his superior.

“We’re going to find out. If not, we’ll move on to New York.”

Sam quickly hurried back home, as fast as he could. He had to throw them off their target, get them to believe he’d moved on, but first he had to think.


	13. One kiss.

When Sam returned back to the house Kurt was awake, sitting up in bed and looking very worried and a little bit angry. “Where were you Sam?” he asked frantically, shooting up out of bed and hurrying over to Sam’s side. His face was contorted with emotion and confusion. “I was so worried but didn’t want to tell Finn or anyone because I didn’t know what was going on yet. I thought someone had hurt you or kidnapped you or something.”

Sam stammered a little, hit by the assault of Kurt Hummel all at once. He was definitely an intimidating personality to deal with. “I…uh, well,” he mumbled, trying to compose himself just a little bit. “Hold on,” he said, sitting down on Kurt’s bed. “I had to go figure out what was going on and if they were really onto me. I figured that if I scouted out the town a little bit, I could figure out if I was being watched or if there was a Manticore presence here.”

Kurt sat back down, a little less livid. He moved close to Sam’s side before asking, “Did you find something out?”

Sam nodded, rubbing a hand through his hair. “They know I’m here,” he said. “They know that I’m here and they’re on my tail. They want to find me and kill me. They don’t even want to bring me back to Manticore because my series is just a waste of genetic material.”

“What do we do?” Kurt asked and Sam had to notice the fact that he used “we” instead of “you.” Kurt was definitely on his side, something that he was not used to when his wishes seemed to always go against the good of the unit at Manticore. He had never really had someone so completely on his side.

“I need to convince them that I’m somewhere else, then maybe, then just maybe I can stay here safely. Right now I’m not safe.” Sam looked up at Kurt and knew that the ‘neither are you’ was implied. He felt horrible for putting Kurt at risk. “I need to leave for awhile.”

“You can’t,” Kurt said simply.

“I’m putting you and your family at risk by being here right now,” Sam said, the magnitude of the danger against his surrogate family more than obvious. “I hopefully have enough training to get them off my trail and then I can come back, but I really need to take off for awhile. They need to think that if I ever was here, that I was just passing through and have since moved on.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No way,” Sam said. “No offense Kurt but I can’t have a normal human holding me down.”

“But Sam…”

“You guys have kind of become my family in the last couple of weeks and I can’t let that family get hurt,” he said. “That’s how family works right?”

“Sam.”

Sam could not handle arguing. It was a very human convention and not one that he had any handle on or understanding of. He could verbally bring most people to their knees because of his negotiation training but a regular old argument with the boy he was falling in love with was not going to work for him. “Come on,” Sam said. “I need to sleep a little bit before I figure out what to do.”

“Sleep with me here?” Kurt asked. “I know it’s kind of forward but…”

“No, that’d be great,” Sam said slipping off his shirt. He slipped into the bed next to Kurt, pulling the sheet up to his neck. Kurt quickly got back into bed with him, staying a cool distance before giving in and pressing their bodies flush against each other. It was nice and made Sam feel warm and happy when his insides were cold and thoughtful. He had so much to calculate, to organize in the messy thoughts that were going through his head.

Sam could not get Sandoval’s shoot-to-kill orders out of his head. It made him feel inadequate, worthless. Kurt’s arms wrapped around his torso, on the other hand, made him feel fantastic. He sighed and tried his best to think about what to do next. He had to figure out his next move.

  
That morning, he told them that he was leaving.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told the four people sitting at the kitchen table. Only Kurt seemed to be unsurprised, but the fact that he was unsurprised did not negate the look of horror at his announcement. “I’m just putting you guys in too much danger by being here and I need to convince them that I’m somewhere else before I can come back. As soon as I convince them that I never was in Lima, I can come back and hopefully be safe.”

It was a ridiculous plan with no organization, no actual clue what he was doing and no strategy. Sam just knew that he had to get as far away from them as possible for right now. He also knew that the idea of a transgenic super soldier living a normal life was ludicrous but he was going to do all he could to keep that life. He needed that life.

“Sam, you can’t go yet!” Kurt said, standing up. Sam expected that reaction from Kurt.

“Kurt, you guys are not safe here,” he said, taking the boy by the shoulders, a gesture that made Kurt’s father give him a dirty look. “I know that it’s scary and it scares me too, but I can’t put you, Finn or your parents at risk. You told me that you couldn’t handle it if anything happened to your dad right? Manticore could vanquish them completely; erase them from having ever existed. You have to trust me.”

“You should let me go with you.”

Sam sighed a little. “We already had this conversation,” he said letting go.

Kurt’s father stood up and clasped him on the shoulder. “I hope to see you here again Sam,” he said, seriously. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

“I don’t sir,” he said, “but I have to go.”

Carole Hudson looked confused at the other end of the table. “None of this makes sense,” she mumbled. “He’s just a child…”

Sam wished that was true but he had never been a child in his life. He was a soldier, trained to fight and kill and his current mission was to get the enemy off of his trail so that he could live the life he desired more than anything.

Finn stood up too. “Dude, this is scary.”

“It is,” Sam said. “Take care of each other and make sure that you stay safe.”

Kurt looked at Sam desperately and Sam did something that he would have regretted if he was a normal teenage boy, but he would never be one of those either. He planted a quick kiss on Kurt’s lips before turning around and heading out the door. He used his speed to get him safely away from them, because he knew if he wasn’t far enough, he would cave and turn back.


	14. He is not human.

It was hard to deal with Sam being gone, especially after nearly losing his father only a couple of months earlier. Had the heart attack really only been a few months ago? Kurt shivered when he thought about that because it really seemed like the pre-Pulse world was slipping away. It had been so long since he had the simple luxuries of talking to Mercedes on his cell phone, or simply going to look something up online. It was a whole different world and now the transgenic super soldier he was undoubtedly crazy about was gone. He did not know where Sam was and if he would be alright. He knew that Sam was in a lot of danger and did not know anything about said danger. It was a helpless feeling and there was nothing Kurt hated more than being helpless.

The idea of losing Sam made his heart drop straight into his stomach. He did not know what he and Sam had but he really cared about him. Maybe it was the teenage romantic in him but he had the potential to love Sam someday. There was something about that boy.

Footsteps echoed on the staircase. Kurt looked up to see his stepbrother standing there and looking concerned as well as confused. “Hey, you okay?” Finn asked.

Kurt laughed and attempted the best joke that he could. “Hey, if my dad didn’t kill me for Sam’s romance movie style exit, then I have nothing to be not okay about.”

Finn sat down next to him, looking and feeling pretty awkwardly. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “That was like something out of a movie that Rachel would make me watch, er, in the old time, I mean.”

Kurt forced a tiny little smile. “I’m really worried about him Finn,” he said, just leaning slightly into his stepbrother’s side. He looked up at Finn to see how he reacted. Finn didn’t seem to have a problem with it, despite the tensions that resulted from Kurt’s prior crush on him. That was really good and while he was feeling so horrible, very welcome. “I hate that I know he’s in a lot of danger, but I don’t really understand what kind of danger. I mean this whole Manticore thing, even the whole super soldier thing; it’s so beyond us or our knowledge of the situation. We don’t know what he’s up against.”

“You really care about him, don’t you?” Finn asked softly. It wasn’t condemning or condescending. Finn was just quietly affirming something that Kurt already knew was true. It was nice to be asked about it and it was nice to be able to say it, when he had become distanced from those he would normally go to in a situation like this.

“I do,” he said. “I’m falling for that boy pretty quickly and now he’s in a lot of trouble.”

Finn leaned over and gave Kurt a very tight hug. He liked the way it felt, being gripped tightly in his stepbrother’s arms. It felt safe. “I hate to be a jerk and ruin the moment,” Finn said, giving Kurt an uncomfortable look, “but we really are supposed to report to school in a few.”

School was now more of a need than a daily requirement, like it had been in the days before. Kurt knew that he needed the distraction. “I’m going to look like hell,” Kurt said softly, giving the other boy a smile. It brought something from their old lives back for a moment.

“Nah you never could,” Finn said. “Meet you upstairs in ten.”

With that, Finn left and Kurt got ready for school. He met up with Finn and they walked to school.

The school had stopped being a place of chaos and was much more of a place of order, but still Kurt felt a little suffocated as they walked onto school grounds. He and Finn were both in the same homeroom class, so they walked over to the same room as always, Kurt staying closer to the bigger boy for protection.

Kurt watched the other kids at McKinley on their way to the classroom. The dynamics of the school had changed so quickly, right along with the rest of the world. The bullying had altogether stopped, slushies and locker slams being a thing of Kurt’s past. The most unusual people clung to each other for help and protection and horrible students suddenly became good ones because school was that one little bit of normalcy.

Kurt was surprised when he and Finn arrived at their homeroom class that there was someone else there, aside from their teacher. She was one of the many armed police officers that walked around the school, but she looked different. She was tired, her face worn with some kind of horrible stress and her hair was a silvery, shiny color of grey. She saw Kurt and Finn and then nodded at the teacher and approached them.

“Boys, I need to speak to you,” she said. “In private.”

Before either Finn or Kurt could speak, she led them out of their homeroom and into one of the adjoining empty classrooms. Kurt did not understand why she would call them aside. They had not done anything wrong and had continuously showed up to school to check in.

“My name is Leslie Howe,” the woman explained, gesturing for them to sit down at the chairs at the front of the room. “I am currently a security officer for the Lima Police Department, but I was formerly a security officer for a little facility in Geneva you may have heard of called Manticore.”

Kurt felt his heart drop into his feet. “No,” he said, but it was obvious that he had heard of it by the way he said it.

She looked at the two of them. “I know that you boys are friends with a kid who goes by the name of Sam Evans,” she said. “I also want you to know that I’ve erased any record of him attending this school and I hope that it helps.”

Kurt stood up. “What do you want?” he asked harshly.

“Well I was planning on warning X4-471 that Robert Sandoval was on his trail, but it seems that he has already been warned,” she said softly. “I saw him scouting around Sandoval’s camp. X4s are fast, but they’re sure as hell not as stealthy when it comes to their hearing as their X5 predecessors. A trained human officer like myself can be just as good.”

“What do you want now then?” Kurt asked coolly.

“You’re good,” the woman said. “You could have worked for Manticore yourself if you were a little older. I had decided that before I moved on to my next duty, that I would warn the friends of this Sam. As much as I wish him the best, I do not approve of humans making close bonds with transgenic soldiers and I figured that I would warn his friends.”

“Warn us what?” Finn asked, standing up with Kurt.

“X4-471 may have escaped in an attempt to become human but he is not and will never be human.”


	15. Always running

The motel room was dirty and lonely. Sam sat on the small bed and thought about the things that he had done so far. He had definitely done a good job riling up attention in New York City. He had almost wound up simultaneously shot at and considered a suicide jumper when he bounded between two buildings just to be seen, but he was sure that he got the point across. It was hilarious how willing people were to talk about the things they’d seen, as long as they weren’t assumed crazy.

It was dangerous but it seemed that it would be easy to bait Sandoval and his men and then slip back to Lima, back home. Lima, Ohio was his home, whether he liked it or not and he would do anything to be able to return back to Lima, back to where he belonged. Sam knew the phrase “this seems too easy” and he was definitely applying it though; he had to admit that it currently did seem too easy. It seemed like his plans were all going the right way.

God, he missed Kurt already. He didn’t really understood what he felt for him, but if he had to guess he would say that he was falling for him. His heart started beating rather fast just thinking about him. It was such a strange concept, this whole falling in love thing. Did most humans who fell in love slowly begin to feel like that other person was a basic need?

Sam knew that Kurt Hummel did not fall under the group of basic needs, but you could have fooled him right then and there.

He shut his eyes and tried to sleep. Missing Kurt was not a pleasant feeling and he needed to rest before he could even begin to understand what to do next. Sleep would do him well, as he had not been able to sleep much since leaving.

A rustling caught his attention and he opened his eyes again. Before he knew it a familiar face had made itself present in his window. “Jondy,” he said, looking at the X5 with what he imagined was a horrified and yet incredulous stare. She had been able to break into the room so flawlessly “What are you doing here?”

“Forget that,” she said. “You’ve done a pretty good job getting them off of your tail so far. Sandoval has left Lima, as far as I can tell, but it’s going to take more than a couple of trick shows to guide him away from your little town.”

“Okay, what are you doing here?” he asked again.

“I’m sticking with you until Colonel Lydecker leaves California,” she said. “That’s where I intend to go, somewhere near Los Angeles.”

The X5 perched at the end of the room’s dresser and smiled. Her pose was that of a cat, a trained soldier and nothing like the child she now appeared to be with a normal dress and haircut. She was a deadly machine. “I gotta admire your guts and humanity, Sam as confusing as it truly is.”

That struck him. He had always admired the X5 escapees for what they had done. They were his inspiration, not the other way around. “Can I ask you about that night?” he asked quietly. He knew that it was probably one of the most personal things he could ask the girl, but he had always wondered about the night that the X5 unit had escaped. He had always wondered if they were feeling the same desperation that he was.

“Jack had seizures,” she said softly. “Really bad. He ended up…disappearing. I’m sure you know what happened.”

Jondy looked at Sam and Sam couldn’t help think about his own recent seizure and how bad it became. It had started to wreak havoc on his nervous system, his body, everything, in just the short time that it had taken Finn and Kurt to go get the drugs.

“Max was having seizures too. We were sure that she would be next.”

Jondy looked distant but kept talking. “Zack organized it. It was quick. Eva was shot; we headed for the forest and cleared the fence. The dogs were all let out. Max and I ran, but her foot caught on the ice and we were separated. Max was the one I was closest to. I haven’t seen her since…it’s almost been a year now…Zack separated us…”

Her disjointed words might not have made sense to Sam as a story but he understood the emotion. “I was alone when I escaped,” he said. “My unit was full of complacent soldiers who did not flinch at the insults and threats of extermination that seemed to only become worse and worse by the day.”

“They were getting close to talking about getting rid of your kind,” Jondy said, snapping out of her own flashes of memory, he supposed. “I can’t tell you much but yes, they were my family and I miss them all.”

“You’ll see each other again someday,” Sam comforted.

“Yeah, someday.”

Sam envied the fact that this X5 had formed such a bond with her Manticore unit, but he did not at all envy the pain that the girl was experiencing. Being one person with Manticore at your tail was dangerous and frightening enough, but being a group of Manticore soldiers free in the world would be impossible.

It hit Sam pretty hard that they wouldn’t stop looking for their lost soldiers.

“When was your escape?” she asked softly.

“Six months ago,” Sam said. “Your escape was my biggest inspiration. I did not want to die and I did not want to be seen as useless anymore. It was selfish and I wanted to prove my worth. I wanted to prove that I was someone.”

It was hard to talk about that moment and not be up there again, rushing through the forest and sleeping out in the woods, trying to get to where he was going. He had not stopped until he found the most innocent little town possible.

He had only stopped running when he couldn’t stop anymore.

“I cleared the area and eventually found Lima,” he said. “It wasn’t that hard with the training I had to construct an identity for myself. I realized that I physically appeared about sixteen years old, so I enrolled at McKinley High School as Sam Evans. I was really starting to learn about blending in.”

“Then the Pulse,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“You have a lot of strength for an X4,” she mumbled.

“I miss the people I’ve become close to there,” he admitted, knowing that she was probably not the best person to go all confessional on, but once he started, it was pretty hard to stop. “Especially Kurt. I just really care about this guy Kurt. It’s scary as hell, you know, falling for someone?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

He nodded. “It is. It’s like…I don’t want to hurt him, but god I want to be where he is.”

The X5 seemed entirely bored by his words.

“I need to sleep,” Sam said, shaking his head. “You can do. I don’t mind sharing the bed.”

She shook her head and looked out the window. “I don’t sleep,” she said. “Shark DNA and all.” He wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.


	16. Good intentions be damned

The woman looked at Kurt and Finn, and started speaking in slow, calm tones, as if she were speaking to a pair of idiots. Kurt was instantly offended by her, but he tried to listen to what she had to say, because knowing more about Sam was absolutely crucial. He had to know more about the boy who had suddenly become the most important part of his life.

“The X-series were designed by Manticore to be the perfect soldiers and the perfect killers,” she said, her voice taking on the tone of a documentary announcer. “It was a noble cause at first. After all, if genetically altered soldiers could be created to defeat the United State’s enemies, then regular humans would not end up losing their lives for war, families would stop being torn apart and these creatures would live for it, for the war, for the kill. It would be in their second nature, so they would not suffer.”

“They were still born, like humans,” Kurt said, seriously, taking even more offense at the term “regular humans.” Sam had told him that much and he would not let her tell him that Sam was not human. Sam was real and human and the most amazing person he had ever been near. Kurt was absolutely in love with Sam.

“They were born to humans, the surrogate mothers that Manticore paid to give birth to them.” Leslie looked from Kurt to Finn and then sat down, uncomfortably. “They were already heavily infused with various types of DNA by the time they were brought to full term. The X4 series was heavily infused with feline DNA from large cat breeds. Their predecessors, the X5 were created the same but with much less genetic anomaly. I believe the X4s could snap at any time and do what they were meant to – kill.”

“This is stupid,” Kurt said. “You don’t know Sam, lady, we know Sam.”

“What do you mean?” Finn asked. Kurt shot his stepbrother a look. Evidently, Finn was not as trusting of the boy as Kurt was. Still, he supposed that he and Finn should learn everything they possibly could from this woman. Kurt wanted to know everything he could about Sam and where Sam had come from.

The woman opened up her briefcase and pulled out several manila folders. She opened up one and handed the documents inside to Finn. “This report details the assassinations that were carried out by members of the X4 series from 1999 to the present. I also think that you, especially, need to view this.” She looked at Kurt meaningfully and handed him several glossed photographs attached to files. “Look familiar?”

Kurt looked down, holding his breath. Lined in a row, the X4s looked like human children, but like they belonged in a military unit. There was a single file for Sam, X4-471. Kurt didn’t even need to know the number to know that he was looking at Sam. He had the same eyes but they were hardened, instead of the soft, gentle ones that Kurt had fallen in love with. He scanned the file and read data about the X4s height, build and success rates at various missions.

Proficient assassin.

Infiltration and assassination missions.

“This doesn’t bother me,” Kurt said. “Sam killed. You said so yourself that they were programmed to kill. Everyone is going to kill if they’re born told that’s what they do.”

He flipped through the file to find a picture of Sam, bloodied. “Usually X4’s were a little bit cleaner with their kills,” she said softly. “Snapped neck and that was the end of their victim. This one went a little bit further, don’t you think?”

Kurt looked at the young boy in the picture and could not disconnect him from Sam. Blood was smeared across his face, as if it had been wiped with a hand. He looked away from whomever was taking this photograph of him, his face blank, ice cold. It was as though he had no emotion or connection to humanity.

No, even if that was who Sam was, it wasn’t anymore. He had been the one to escape. He had been the one to rise above what he had been trained to be. “I really want you to leave me alone,” he said softly. “You’re at my school, our safe place, this is…not good. I’m sorry if Manticore’s gonna come get you or whatever, but you can’t be here.”

She took the photographs back. “I just wish to help you, because I’ve seen you with that child. I will be moving for my safety, now that Lima has become a city of target. I just figured that I could do one good deed, to make up for a lifetime of bad ones.”

Kurt swallowed and wrapped his arms around himself. He calmed down, breathing slowly. It meant nothing. It meant nothing. It wasn’t Sam. It was Sam but it was a Sam that had disappeared into the night when Sam escaped. It didn’t exist anymore. He didn’t care what this woman was babbling about his genetics. It didn’t matter. There was only one Sam and that was the Sam that he loved.

“Thank you,” Kurt said coldly, grabbing his stepbrother by the arm. “C’mon Finn, we need to get to class.”

Kurt walked back to the classroom briskly, but once he got there he changed his mind and walked into the boy’s bathroom. Finn, of course, followed.

“It’s not true, what she says,” Kurt said, hearing his brother’s footsteps behind him. “I know that Sam isn’t capable of murder, not anymore without the orders behind him. He escaped that place for a reason. He escaped where other’s didn’t, because he rose above what he was supposed to be. I know him.”

“We don’t know him that well,” Finn mumbled. “Are you sure there’s not a reason for us to worry? He might have been made unstable or something.”

“He was not Finn,” Kurt said. “Go to class okay? I want to think for a bit.” Kurt leaned against the bathroom wall, groaning. He knew Sam better than Finn did. Sam hadn’t confessed little but important things to Finn. Sam hadn’t looked into Finn’s eyes the way that he had looked into Kurt’s. Kurt loved Sam, ex-Manticore employee with good intentions be damned.


	17. Coming home.

Sam pulled back off of the wall, gripping at his arm. A bullet had grazed his shoulder, but he was doing alright, he was built strong. He and Jondy had been shot at and the shooters, according to the smartass X5 were “definitely Manticore.”

“Well, the fact that they’re definitely Manticore makes this a success, right?” he asked. He was in a little bit of pain but it was no big deal. He had been shot in training before and this was barely a scratch in comparison. He just wanted to make sure that they had Manticore off of their trail and could head towards a point in time where they could live normal lives. All that mattered to Sam, the objective of this mission so to speak was just to get back to Kurt. Getting back to Kurt was all that truly mattered.

“Perhaps,” the girl said, checking out the sides of them for any sign of activity. She signaled to Sam with her hands that they were clear, even as she spoke the words. Training had been ingrained into the X5 far deeper than it had in him. It would take her a long time to escape the holds of who she had been before this. “We’re clear for now, Sam, I want to get you back to the motel and patch you up before we figure out what to do next. You’re not going to be any help bleeding all over like that. It’s just going to slow you down and make a mess.”

“Truth,” Sam said, smirking a little bit. He followed her along. They had truthfully lost the trail of the Manticore officers who had been on their case. It was a relief, considering that a real encounter with Manticore officers could have been far more deadly. “I’ll do whatever it takes, even if we have to lead them on another wild goose chase,” he said, as they arrived at the motel. They had both used their full strength to get there, so it had only taken a couple of minutes. When they arrived he sat down on the bed and mumbled the words he had been dying to say, “I just want to get home to Kurt.”

“I don’t really get this love thing,” she said, blandly. “I loved the others, I suppose, but still, it’s weird and not something that is completely in my range of comprehension. It seems that it leads to foolishness.”

Sam quirked an eyebrow at her and laughed. “Yes, it does,” he said, sitting down on the bed and groaning. He checked his arm. The bleeding had become a little more manageable and apparently the X5 was a trained medic, because she immediately started putting together some makeshift bandages for him.

“You really need some kind of antiseptic,” she said, “but I’m sure it’ll heal just fine.”

Sam let her bandage up his wounds with the cloth strips she had formed out of old clothing, leaning against the bed.

“Do you think they’ll ever stop looking, Sam?” she asked gingerly, after a few moments of patching him up. “Even if we have them off our trail completely, right now, and you go back to Lima and I go on to California?”

Sam thought about that. He was not sure. Even if he was a simple waste of genetic material, he honestly did not think they would ever stop looking. He wondered what that meant for him and what it meant for Kurt. Could he and Kurt go on and live a good, normal life? Could he survive? Could he put Kurt through all of this when he truly wasn’t human and would always be brought down by those who’d made him?

What did his future hold? God all he knew was that he wanted to get back to Kurt.

“No,” he mumbled. “I don’t think they’ll ever stop looking.”

It was incredibly sobering to think like this, think about never having a chance to have a normal life. Then again, the normal humans out there, they never imagined their world would be turned around by an electromagnetic pulse. By Sam’s understanding, he could call Kurt right now in the old world, just dial Kurt and ask him how he was doing, if he was okay.

He couldn’t.

The world wasn’t any more normal than he was.

“You know what? I can’t run another distraction mission. I’m going home.”

Sam was surprised when the words came out of his mouth, but they did. He was going home. He could not take this anymore. He was going to go home and do his best to live a normal life. Manticore be damned, he was not going to let anyone get their hands on his Kurt. Kurt was not going to be harmed in any way at all.

“That’s not advisable, Sam.”

He shook his head. “No, but the rules don’t apply anymore,” he said. “This world isn’t the same as it once was and Kurt’s what really matters. I can keep him safe. They’re always going to be looking for me and I can’t keep running away from the only thing that makes me human. What I feel for Kurt is better than anything else, you have to understand that.”

“I don’t,” she mumbled hesitantly.

Sam hugged the X5. “I wish you the best,” he said, pulling her into an embrace before she could object to him doing so. “You always know what city you’ll find me in Jondy, okay? If you need any help getting out of a sticky situation, or anything, you know where to come. Thank you so much for helping me out here but you have to get on to California and I have to go home to Kurt.”

“You are crazy, X4-471.”

“Oh yes, I am.”

Sam was proud of his craziness. He gave Jondy another long lingering hug and then headed down towards the abandoned areas they had discovered the night before. He wouldn’t need a vehicle yet, not with his speed and strength. He just wanted to get home to Kurt. Kurt was living in this broken world with him and he had to make sure that nothing befell the person he was so incredibly in love with.

“Coming home.”


	18. Missed me?

Sam returned to the house the way he left. He grabbed Kurt from behind, pressed a firm kiss to his lips and looked into those gorgeous eyes of his. God, he loved Kurt’s eyes. He was exhilarated but exhausted, needing some rest from the trip. He pulled away from the kiss and gave Kurt a sly smirk. “Miss me?” he asked gently.

He watched the emotions pass through Kurt’s eyes. Kurt was shocked, surprised, excited and full of some kind of anxiety that Sam did not quite understand. “Sam!” he yelled, looking at Sam with big eyes. “You’re home, you’re here, and you’re with me. I can’t believe it! How?”

Sam opened his mouth to answer but before words even left him, Kurt noticed his injuries and immediately started fussing, running his hands over Sam’s shoulder. “You’re hurt, it’s bleeding,” he said, frantically. “What happened Sam?”

“It’s just a graze wound,” Sam said, shaking it off. “Some Manticore people were shooting at us.”

“Shooting? Us?” Kurt asked, frantically.

“Me and Jondy,” he said. “I met the kid as soon as I got to New York. She was a huge help and very skilled at what she did. She patched me back up and maybe I should have stayed longer but she got me thinking about myself, about my life and about what mattered.”

‘What?” Kurt asked.

Sam leaned down and kissed him once again. “I realized that you’re kind of what matters,” he mumbled. “I can’t say that they’ll ever stop looking for me but I can be here with you and do my best to make sure that you’re safe. You’re what matters.”

Kurt’s eyes watered up a little and for a minute Sam was afraid that he was going to start crying. “I’m so happy to see you alive and mostly unhurt, Sam,” he mumbled softly. “C’mon let’s go down to the basement for a bit, or else Carole will fuss in the worst way when she sees that your hurt.”

Kurt quickly led Sam down to the basement but Sam immediately picked up that someone was following them. By the clunky nature of the footsteps, he was sure that they belonged to Finn. “Hey Finn,” he said, glancing backwards.

Finn looked suspicious of him, to say the very least. His eyes were narrowed and he looked at Sam like he was some kind of animal. “Sam, you’re back,” he said, stating the obvious.

“I am,” Sam said tensely, catching the tension from Finn. He didn’t like it one bit.

Finn kept trying to shoot Kurt looks that Kurt was purposely avoiding. Sam looked from one boy to the other, trying to catch what was being said without words. “What happened when you were gone, Sam?” Finn asked.

Sam tried to explain, despite the fact that he felt like suspect number one on some America’s Most Wanted List. “I went to New York,” he said. “I stayed in a motel for a couple of days and let people spy a little superhuman action.”

The tension was bothering Sam. There was something going on here that he didn’t understand. Finn kept looking at him like he was going to eat his head off if he so much as touched Kurt’s hand.

“What’s wrong guys?” he asked, confused.

Finn and Kurt exchanged a long, lingering glance. “Nothing’s wrong,” Kurt said, his voice revealing that he was lying. Sam was an expert at picking up when people were lying and this was kind of idiotic.

“Kurt,” he said, reaching for Kurt.

Finn got between the two of them.

“Guys, I really just want to know what’s wrong.”

Kurt hesitated again but then walked over to his bed, sitting down on the end of the mattress. “While you were gone,” he said quietly, “we were approached by a woman. She was a former Manticore officer.”

“There’s no such thing as a former Manticore officer,” Sam said immediately. “Their employees are in it for life, or they die. I’ve been ordered to carry out some of those murders myself. There is no way that this person could have escaped their clutches.”

Kurt spoke slowly. “I don’t know what she was then,” he said. “But she told us about you and how you were dangerous. She showed us pictures of you, covered in blood and said that the X4s weren’t exactly stable creatures. She said that we couldn’t trust you because you’re not and never will be human.”

He was so overwhelmed that he forgot about the ludicrous nature of what they were saying. There couldn’t be a former Manticore officer, could there? It didn’t really matter to Sam if she was a former Manticore or not, honestly.

It hurt him that Finn and Kurt were suspicious of his stability. “You think that I’m a killer?” he asked softly. “Do you guys really think that I’m unstable and could snap and kill you in an instant? Manticore trained us. We were trained to be fast and efficient killing machines. I’m not going to lie to either of you and say that I didn’t kill. I killed. I would have to put my kill count somewhere in the twenty-to-thirty range, honestly. Yet, I killed on order. I wasn’t okay with what I was doing but I didn’t know any other way.”

He approached Kurt and frowned, heavily.

“The things that I had to do blindly weighed on me,” he said, touching his chest. “They hurt. I realized after awhile that I was probably feeling morality. I was feeling wrong because of the things that I did. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, so I had to stop. I escaped. As far as I know, the only Manticore soldiers to ever escape include me and a team of X5s.”

Kurt stood in front of him speechless.

“I have to think for a little bit,” he told Kurt, climbing up the stairs. “I missed you.”


	19. Shattered glass

Sam knew that it was stupid to walk out on Kurt and Finn, but he had just been so infuriated at the implication that anyone could think of him as inhuman. He was human, damn it. He was as human as Kurt or Finn or any of the people that he cared about. He was born from a mother’s womb, even if he was genetically altered. He may have had some shitty genetics but he wasn’t malfunctioning and killing someone any time soon.

It wasn’t fair.

He climbed up to the top of the school, a place that had so much meaning for him. He perched over the edge of the building, thinking about memory, childhood memories to be specific. While most children like Kurt or Finn had memories of their parents taking care of them, he had memories of training exercises.

He had been only seven years old when he nearly drowned.

Swimming across the channel, X4-471 knew that he wasn’t going to be able to make the distance. His muscles were growing weak. He had been training for hours and his body was not equipped to do this, not like the prototypes that were maybe two years of age at most .He struggled, arms flailing a little more as he lost his speed and stamina. He tried to swim, body kicking and moving but he couldn’t make it.

He inhaled water into his lungs. He knew that his kind could tolerate holding their breath a lot longer than regular human beings but at the same time water in the lungs would kill them, easily.

“471 I should have let you drown!”

His commanding officer pulled him into the boat and left him there coughing and sputtering.

“You are worthless. Your whole kind is worthless.”

He had been worthless because he was not strong enough, but he was also worthless because he was not brutal enough. He did not want to kill in cold blood just because he was ordered.

“Shoot him.”

He paused, staring the man in the eye. He was being ordered to shoot an unarmed man in cold blood. Honestly, it was probably the least cruel of the things he could be ordered to do. For the crimes that Matthew Dawson had committed against Manticore, Sam could have been ordered to snap his neck or dismember him slowly. He could have been forced to remove several vital parts of the man’s body in order to hear him scream as he died.

“He’s unarmed and has his back to me,” Sam said.

“Are you defying an order X4-471.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”  
The time spent in the basement going through reindoctrination had been totally worth it. They had killed Dawson, even more brutally than Sam would have, but he had been defiant and all the pain in the world had been worth it.

“I’m human,” Sam said standing up. He wiped tears from his eyes. It was stupid. He had spent sixteen years feeling like he was useless because he couldn’t be a killer, couldn’t be strong enough “I’m human and I’m not worthless. I’m not a killer and I was never made to be what they wanted me to be.”

He yelled out. “I’m human!”

“I know you are Sam.”

Sam turned around and oh god, Kurt was standing on the building, walking slowly. He was obviously not so comfortable with being up there, even though it was barely a two story building.  
“How did you get up here? There were no ledges or anything for a human to climb up.” It was true. He had taken notice of that before he bounded up the building.

“I’m not an ordinary human and neither are you,” Kurt said as he sat down. “We are however, both humans. I’m so sorry Sam. That woman came around and she really polluted my mind and Finn’s as well. We were just worried because we’ve never encountered anyone like you. You are one of a kind.”

“I guess I am.”

Kurt leaned up close. “Did you get them off of your trail?” he asked.

“Hopefully,” Sam said, leaning back into Kurt. It felt so good. “I’m sorry that I walked out on you and Finn. I was just dealing with so many memories and I couldn’t handle them. I mean, I was thinking about all the times that I wanted to prove how human I was. I feel good about being free of them, even if I’m not certain. They’re never going to stop chasing me Kurt.”

“Correction,” Kurt said quietly. “They’re never going to stop chasing us Sam.” Sam smiled at those words and leaned down, pressing his lips to Kurt’s. Kurt curled up into his arms in that second, just grinning. “No matter what Sam, no matter what happens, we’ll always be a team.”

Sam brought Kurt closer and kissed him slowly.

He wrapped a hand around Kurt’s cheek, kissing him back and really enjoying the feeling. It was just something he could and would never get over, enjoying Kurt’s kiss. As they parted, Kurt fell forward, stumbling against Sam’s chest and going face down on the concrete beneath him.

“What the hell?”

Sam jumped up, his instincts springing to life. He had to save Kurt. He sprung to his feet and lunged forward but he was caught dead in his tracks by a calm female voice.  
“Stay where you are, X4-471,” she said. He accessed her but did not move, compelled by the authority in her voice. “Your human has just been tranquilized but I have no problem with killing him. Like you, I have become a monster in my years at Manticore.” She was a woman of early middle-age and familiar to Sam in some uncomfortable way. She took another syringe full of what she had injected Kurt with, jabbing it into the boy’s side, just above his hip. “I know very well that you could snap my neck without effort but if you want this boy to live, rather than OD on a powerful tranquilizer then you won’t move.”

“Who are you and what do you want?” he said, body still.

“I’m Leslie Howe, former Manticore officer in charge of several units of creatures like you,” she said. “I talked to that boy and his little friend earlier, warning them about the creature they were dealing with. I was content to warn them and then just run, but then I realized that I am not content to always be running. Sam, that is what they call you now, right? You may be content to run until they kill you but I will not.”

“Manticore wants me dead,” Sam said, staying painfully still. He could feel every muscle tense and unmoving. “You won’t get absolution or freedom by turning me over to Manticore or manipulating me. The X4s are a dying breed.”

“Another reason that Robert Sandoval is an idiot and not worthy of his position,” she said. “I gave Manticore a very nice anonymous tip, Sam. You are much more of a waste of space then the escaped X5s, this is true, but you can easily be used to predict the genetic markers of a rebel. They’re trying to design the X-series to be completely animalistic, obedient. They can tear you apart to find out what went wrong. For once, Sammy boy, you won’t be a waste and I can live my life without fear of being murdered.”

“Leave Kurt out of this,” Sam said, surprised at the diabolic nature of her words. He looked at the boy laying passed out face first on the ground and breathed deep, trying not to give her the satisfaction of his begging.

“It’s amazing. You really do love that kid, don’t you? I never imagined that your kind were developed to be capable of emotion.”

Sam looked at her, trying to do his best to keep her calm. She could not hurt Kurt.

“Stand up.”

He stood up, slowly. He knew that he could reach her in a fraction of a second but that was long enough for her to depress the plunger. He could not get out of this without her hurting Kurt.

She drew him near to her. He heard the cold metal clink of her slapping handcuffs around his wrists. “This alloy is the only thing that Manticore used to keep your kind bound, so don’t even make an attempt.”

She drew the syringe back, dropping it. The glass shattered.


	20. Determination and love.

When Kurt woke up, he was alone.

Grogginess prevented him from opening his eyes without them slipping back closed and nausea overtook him suddenly. He waited and slowly adjusted his eyesight. He did not like the groggy-sick feeling. He forced his eyes to open up. He was very much alone. He slowly recalled where he had been before. He had been on the roof talking to Sam. He had been kissing Sam and then fell down to the ground.

He got up slowly, staggering as though he were drunk. He looked over the edge of the building and backed up, afraid that he was going to fall off of it. He had to get back down and he wasn’t entirely stable. He very slowly eased himself over the edge and down the pipe he had used to get up.

He fell near the end. Ouch.

Kurt looked around. “Sam!” he called. Sam was nowhere to be found and it was already starting to get dark. His family would have expected him to be home long before. He raced home, walking as quickly as he could. He still stumbled and staggered, but he kept on moving. He had to keep on moving.

The moment he got home, his father sprung to his feet. “Kurt!” he yelled. “Where were you? You know that without cell phones and stuff that I need you to come home when I tell you. What can I do? Where have you been all this time? We were freaking out.”

Kurt held up his hand, trying to explain. “I…I …Dad, I was with Sam and then I…I passed out or something and now he’s gone.”

“What happened?” Finn asked. “What did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything,” Kurt said softly, sitting down to try and still his dizzy head. “I was talking to Sam, I apologized to him. We were hanging out and kissing and stuff and then I blacked out.”

“Where were you?” Finn asked, just as Carole came into the room as well and it was three on one. “I mean, where in the school were you.”

“We were on the roof,” Kurt said, slowly leaning down and putting his head in his hands to calm the dizziness and the way that his heart was racing. “Sam is in trouble. Something is really wrong. I know now that I should have looked around the roof for things, but I was sick and groggy and I barely made it down.”

“We have to go back and find out what happened to you Kurt,” Carole said instantly. Kurt would never imagine that his stepmother was a total action-woman who did not ask questions and who immediately sprung to action but he was finding out more and more now that she was. She got the job done and took care of her family. “We have to find out what happened to Sam, but first you need to get better, relax, let whatever the hell they put in you get out of your system.”

Kurt reached around and he lifted up his shirt. “Here, Carole.”

There was definitely a mark from where he was injected with something. Kurt bruised pretty easily and his childhood injections had always been accompanied with bruises almost immediately after they were gone.

“He’s definitely been drugged,” Carole mumbled, running the pad of her thumb over the red mark.

“Who the fuck would drug my kid?” Burt cursed, looking at Carole. Kurt couldn’t lift his head and meet his eyes.

“I don’t know Burt.”

It took him over an hour to convince them that he was alright and that he really needed to get to the school to find out what had happened to Sam. They walked together, a complete family unit. Kurt had to admit that it was overwhelmingly touching, the way that his family bonded together, but he was too scared to really appreciate it.

“I climbed down from the roof here,” Kurt said, showing his family where he had stumbled down from the top of the building. “I need to go back up there. When I went up to find Sam for the first time I used that water pipe over there to pull myself up.”

Kurt headed over to the water pipe, but as soon as he got his hands on it a voice rang out.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Sue.

In the wake of The Pulse, Sue Sylvester had slowly taken over McKinley High School, exerting her dominance in the time of crisis like nobody else would. She was now the Principal-slash-God of the school and Kurt knew he could not get where he was going without approaching her.

“Coach Sylvester,” he said calmly. His family did not seem to know how to deal with the track suit wearing woman, but he did. “I really can’t explain but I need to go back up to the roof. Sam Evans was hurt and maybe kidnapped up there and I need to know what happened to him.”

“So you brought the whole flock to find out what happened?” she said, tilting her head towards Kurt’s family.

“They didn’t want me to come alone. Someone drugged me, Coach Sylvester and I’m really scared, alright?”

“Fear is useless. How do you suppose you’re going to get up there, girlie?”

Kurt was surprised at the curt, quick way that this conversation was going. The world had changed so much. Nobody even questioned the absurdity or the fact that a young man was kidnapped off of the school roof. It was all about action.

“I would think that you’d give me more credit than that,” Kurt said tensely. “I was one of your Cheerios, I think I can handle it.”

Pushing past the confused coach, Kurt climbed up the water pipe. The task was about a million times more difficult than it had been the first time, but adrenaline guided him and he was up before he knew it. He landed on the flat of the roof, looking around himself. He walked carefully toward the spot where he had found Sam looking out onto the horizon.

At first, Kurt thought that no sign of what had happened to him was left behind. He saw a scuff near the side of the roof that he realized came from his shoe when he hit the ground. He ran a finger over it, but it was hardly a clue.

It only took him five minutes to locate the shattered syringe. It was broken but still wet inside. He delicately picked up the largest piece.

Someone had drugged him and had taken Sam. Kurt could not fathom who, though, unless Sam had been unsuccessful in getting Manticore off of his tail and they had tracked him back to Lima and took him.

He practically jumped off the building on his way back down. He held out the broken glass to his family and Sue. “Alright,” he said, taking charge in a way that only felt right. “I found this. I was right that someone drugged me.”

“Hold on Kurt,” his father said, holding up a hand. “Miss Sylvester here was just telling us about a staff member gone missing.”

Finn looked to Kurt. “Dude, it’s her, the chick who talked to us about Sam.”

Kurt felt his stomach drop into the floor. “Coach Sylvester?” he asked, setting down the broken glass in his hand before it cut his palm.

“Leslie Howe was one of the Special Forces guards that came to McKinley to keep the student body in order,” Sue said. “She went missing as of two days ago and took several student files from Figgins office with her. I went back and used my photographic memory to recall what she stole. She stole any evidence that Evans was a student here.”


	21. Gotta find you.

“You’re an idiot.”

Sam was in the back of some kind of van, bound at his wrists and ankles with that strange metal alloy that he could not break. He was honestly terrified but he was not about to let that show. He instead resolved to break down the already fragile woman’s mind. She did not respond to him, bustling around, working with some kind of computer system. It was strange, since all of the computers in the world were still currently defunct, but whatever she was working with seemed to be functioning at least to some degree. She must have kept a few tricks up her sleeve when she left Manticore behind.

He kept talking, despite her lack of response.

“If you think that Manticore is going to let you live, even after you turn me over, then you’re truly an idiot. Maybe if I was one of their precious X5s then you’d stand a chance. I’ve heard that Colonel Lydecker has a bit of a soft spot and maybe you could have tweaked your way into his heart, but I’m useless to you. You’re walking right into the lion’s den Leslie and it’s going to be your head on an autopsy table right next to mine.”

She still failed to respond to him.

“You’re the one, the one who told Finn and Kurt that I was an inhuman monster, aren’t you? It’s hilarious, really, considering what you’re doing right now. You’re selling me out to save your own skin, letting Manticore disembowel me. Do you really think I’m inhuman? Do you think that it won’t hurt me what they do to me? Do you think it won’t be blood and guts and organs lying on that table?”

She finally spoke.

“I’m not going to live my life running.”

“It’s not a beautiful or ideal thing, realizing that you’re going to be running from them for the rest of your life. I realized that when I was doing my damndest to keep them off of my trail and away from the people I love. It’s going to suck and it’s going to take a lifetime of running to stay alive, but you know what? I’d rather run than sell myself out to the devil. They’re not going to let you live Leslie. You seemed to know the vivid details of the assassinations they had my kind carry out. We killed enemies of Manticore, of course, but we also killed traitors from the inside. They were often shot in the back.”

The woman flinched. He saw it and tried to pry deeper into that wound.

“We could work together to keep ourselves safe,” Sam said. “There are others out there like you, I’m sure. I thought that an ex-Manticore officer was something that could not possibly exist but this is a big world and Manticore has made its fair share of enemies. There is also an entire unit of X5s out there, fighting, running. Do you really plan on selling me over to Manticore? Do you really think it’ll save your sorry life?”

She hit him, backhanding him across the face. “Shut up you stupid mutant!”

Sam closed his eyes. God, he hoped that Kurt was alright and that he had the sense to not go searching for Sam, not go digging into trouble. He knew the moment that the thought crossed his mind, however, that Kurt had said that he and Sam were together in this, no matter what. Kurt was now in as much danger of dying as he was. Sam pulled against the handcuffs that were holding him tightly but they would not budge in the slightest.

-

Kurt would not budge in the slightest as Coach Sylvester told him what she knew about the missing employee. Finn and his parents were right at his side but he knew that this was all about him. He was the one who loved Sam and he was the one who had to find a way to save his life. This crazy woman had taken him and it was obvious that her intentions for him were completely sinister. He was scared at how helpless he was.

“Is there anything else?” Kurt asked, though he could tell by the expression on her face that there was nothing else she could tell him about the missing boy or the missing member of her staff that had taken him.

“What did she do to lady lips, kid?” Sue asked.

“I don’t know,” Kurt admitted. “I’m…I’m scared, Coach Sylvester. Sam’s special and I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him.”

For a moment, Kurt could see a flash of pity in the woman’s eyes. “We’ll get your loverboy back,” she said. “Let me see if my friends in the government can do anything for him. Meanwhile, get your family back home, Kurt. Something evil is afoot and I’m not going to have that at my school.”

Finn put an arm on Kurt. “Dude, we need to go back home and think or something,” he said. “We can’t do any more good here and people are starting to crowd around a bit.”

It took a lot of effort but between Finn and his parents, Kurt eventually found his way home. The Hummel-Hudson house was not empty however. The girl with short hair and piercing eyes, the X5 called Jondy, was sitting on top of his dad’s car, perched and waiting for their arrival.

“Where is Sam?” she asked, quickly. She jumped down from the car and stared at them with eyes that were more cat-like than ever. “He’s in much danger. Zack sent word to us that Manticore was heading back into Ohio on some kind of call. I shouldn’t be here. Hell, Zack would kill me and cut me off from contact like he did with Max if he knew what I was doing, but I had to warn Sam.”

“Sam’s gone,” Kurt said, frantically. He stepped up towards the girl, hoping that she knew something, anything that could help him find Sam. “I think that this woman, Leslie Howe, who was working at my school, I think she kidnapped him.”

Her eyes darkened considerably. “Officer Howe was one of the combat officials at Manticore,” she said quickly. “I heard in the barracks shortly before our escape that she was eliminated.”

“Surprise, she’s alive,” Kurt said, frantically. “She was working at our school as a guard and told my brother and I that Sam was a monster and that we couldn’t trust him, because he was inhuman. I sincerely think she was responsible for what happened to him.”

The girl’s eyes were alight. She was thinking through things. “It’s no doubt that she escaped Manticore’s clutches and is using Sam as a bargaining chip to get herself back in their good graces. It won’t happen, ever, but at the same time it’s as good of a chance as she has.”

“Is she like him?” Carole asked Kurt.

He nodded, eyes still locked on Jondy. “Can you help me get to him?” he asked.

She shook her head, but then stopped herself. “I’ll help you Kurt,” she said, “but only because he’s so lost to his love for you. If Manticore becomes involved and takes him though then I won’t. I won’t jeopardize my freedom for him.”

Kurt looked at the girl and for an instant he understood her horror. She was going against everything that she believed in to save Sam and she was risking the thing most precious to her, her freedom. “I definitely accept your terms,” he said softly. “I just really need help getting to Sam. If something happens to him…”

“I got enough of the sappy love stuff from him,” she said quickly. “Come on. We need to locate this woman. I’ll use all of my ability to get a location on Manticore officials. Wherever they are, she is. She’s attempting to transfer him to them, undoubtedly.”

“I’m going with you,” Kurt said quickly.

“I anticipated that,” she said quickly. “You’re a very stubborn thing.”

“Kurt.”

Kurt turned around to face his father. The man had been quiet for a very long time, but now that he knew that his son was putting himself into unfathomable danger for Sam, he could not stop himself from speaking.

“I know what you’re going to say Dad,” Kurt said quickly. “I know that it’s dangerous and stupid but…Sam is so haunted by that place and I can’t be the one to let him be dragged back there.”

“If I directly forbade you to go, Kurt…”

“Dad, even if you directly forbade me, I would still go,” he said, looking to the young transgenic who just shook her head. She did not understand the relations between all of them.

“Do you have a working vehicle? As far as my understanding goes, cars that predate electronically dominated systems are working to a reasonable degree now.”

Burt looked at Kurt and then to the young super-soldier. “I have an old van that’s proving to work pretty decently. It’s the one in the garage. It’s an eighty-six but I’ve kept it working like a baby. You can use it.”

“Do you know how to drive?” the girl asked Kurt.

Kurt nodded, quickly.

Kurt knew that his family was worried about him and that this was the most dangerous thing that he had ever done in his whole life but he had to be strong for Sam. He leaned over and hugged his dad, who hugged him back tightly. “I know that I couldn’t have been stopped if it was someone I loved,” his father said reassuringly, hugging tightly. “Just be safe Kurt, please.”

Kurt nodded. “I will.”

He looked at Finn. “Take care of them alright? I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

“I trust you dude, I…I believe in you.”


	22. Who are you?

It didn’t take long in her clutches for Sam to realize that Leslie Howe was slowly becoming unhinged. She talked like someone who had all of their brain-cells together and coherent but underneath the surface, she wasn’t, because some of that eloquent speech was directed at herself. Sam didn’t know much about human psychiatry but he knew that talking to oneself was not an indication of mental health. “I promised them their X4, a little treat to put down on the autopsy table and I know that they will reciprocate by pardoning me. I know that Manticore pay those who assist them well.”

“I’ve already told you Leslie,” he said quietly. “I’ve already told you that Manticore will not forgive you for betraying them, for running out on them. I, myself, have murdered people for far less. You can never escape Manticore. That is why I didn’t believe Finn and Kurt, when they told me that there was an ex-Manticore officer speaking to them. You are never an ex-Manticore officer. You can’t be a former Manticore officer anymore than I can be a former transgenic. I am what I am and you are what you are. All we can do is work to make ourselves better.”

He knew she was just as much of a victim of Manticore as he was, but it was hard to feel sorry for the woman who imprisoned you and was planning to use you as a bargaining piece. Sam watched her every move, intensely.

She picked up something long and cylindrical that he recognized. It was a neurotrasmitting torture device, something that Manticore used often, especially during reindoctrination sessions. Sam shuddered in instant fear but he did not let it show. He was not going to let her know that he was afraid of her.

“You stole a lot from them, didn’t you Leslie?” he asked. “Not only did you steal a lot of valuable Manticore equipment, you’re going to be as bold as to have it on you, when they come for me? Smart.”

She jabbed it into his side.

He moaned as every nerve ending in his body was immediately set on fire. The pain was overwhelming. He closed his eyes and bit his lip to prevent any type of screaming or vocalization of the pain. “Really smart,” he rasped out, instead of the cries he wanted to make. “Better not leave a mark on me Leslie, might mess up their…their autopsy!”

“You know this is child’s play compared to what they could do back in the facilities,” she said, almost smiling. Sam was sure that the more she realized he was right, the more she was becoming unhinged. She removed the device from his side and he fell forward against his bonds. He could feel the muscles under his skin twitching. He stared up at her. He could not push himself back up with his wrists bound.

It would take a lot more than that to break a soldier who had been trained to withstand the worst.

She toyed with the dial at the end of the shaft, turning it up. Sam recognized what she was doing and knew that the unhinged woman could do a lot of damage. He held his breath and did not let any of his emotions betray themselves in his eyes.

She jabbed the device back into his side. It was a portable version of the neuron torture that Manticore used on it’s transgenics but it was enough to send him over the edge, especially if Leslie went to extremes without having the sense to build it up. Sam was an observant little super-soldier, he knew that there was a method to rewiring the brain of an X-series through torture.

“You know, you’re going to mess me up beyond repair if you keep at that. It’d be a shame…”

“I could wreck you without leaving a mark.”

She amped the dial all the way up and oh god – the pain shot through him yet again. He screamed, unable to keep the sound from coming out of his throat. Every muscle, every bone, all the way down to the nerve endings were burning. It was so hot, everything was on fire. His brain shifted inside and he knew he was on the verge of being broken into.

Did she remember what she could do to him with this? Did she remember the reason why Manticore slowly upped the torment even when they were reindoctrinating an unruly soldier? Did she remember?

He writhed, pulling against the bindings that held him.

 

Jondy and Kurt were headed down the street in the old beat up car, when Jondy ordered him to pull over. She left him for a moment and when she returned in a split-second, she had information. “I found Manticore officers,” she said, as though that had been the easiest task ever. “They’re meeting our target on the crossstreets of 5th and Belmont. Do you know what lies there?”

Kurt nodded.

“There was an old building of some kind, a computer plant I think…”

“We need to go there.”

They drove quickly to the crosstreets and once again Jondy ordered him to stop the car. They were still a few blocks away. The girl looked around like a trained soldier seeking out enemies.

“We need to leave the vehicle,” she said. “I hope you can run fast, Kurt.”

She used a fraction of her strength to run there, Kurt following after her as fast as they could. The building was once a warehouse for a computer plant but now that computer technology was pretty much obsolete, it was completely empty. Outside of it, in the area probably once reserved for shipping, a grey colored van was parked. “I hear mechanical devices from the inside.”

Jondy paused for a second and it seemed she was focusing n on something. “I hear screaming,” she said. “Kurt, I need you to stay behind me. We’re going to take her out before Manticore even figures out where to locate her, hopefully.”

They approached the car and Jondy mumbled under her breath, as though she were trying to remember something. She knocked on the front of the van in some kind of code. She then waited for something, looking perturbed when it didn’t come. “She should have responded to that code,” Jondy said softly. “Stand back Kurt.”

When Kurt stood back, the X5 reached for the door and unsurprisingly tore it off of its hinges.

The woman, the same woman who had told Kurt and Finn what a monster Sam was, was currently holding something long against the boy’s side. Sam’s body was jerking around in agony and he was screaming. “You can’t do this for me. I’m slipping. I love Kurt. I need to see him… before I slip. I’m slipping. You don’t remember, do you, you dumb bitch!”

Jondy lunged forward, grabbing the woman by the throat. Her tiny hand tightened around the woman’s neck and it was obvious that she could crunch it between her fingers if she wanted to. She held Leslie to the side of the van, which teetered on the verge of falling over. “It’s been a long time, Leslie Howe,” she said, her voice low. “Do you remember me? I went by X5-210. I certainly remember you. You were one of the ones who took Jack away from us. Do you know that I could kill you now?”

“I remember. The X5 was broken. Broken down little X5, brain didn’t work right. We took apart his brain to figure out what made you come out wrong. Now I can give Manticore back one of their precious X5s. Did you know they’re coming and they’ll take you back? What I just did to pretty Sammy has nothing on the reindoctrination they’ll put you through X5-210. You’re still useful.”

Kurt dug through the things on the drawer, finding that Sam was bound tightly with some kind of handcuffs. His body was shivering, twitching in something akin to the seizure that he had with Kurt, but not quite the same. “Where are the keys?” he asked under his breath.

“Don’t bother with keys,” Jondy said, still holding the woman by the throat. “I hear cars. Get him back down the street towards our car. He can’t move as fast as he needs to, not in this condition.”

“Don’t kill her,” Kurt said, looking to Jondy. “Leave her for them.”

Jondy looked Leslie over and then looked back to Sam. She slammed the woman into the side of the van, leaving her in a heap on the bottom.

She picked Sam up over her shoulder and they headed out to the car as fast as they could. That was when the bullets started flying but they could sneak out undetected if they kept on driving.

It took moments for Jondy to assess that they were safe. “They’re going to be more interested in her than in Sam for awhile,” she said. “We need to keep driving though, to the forest.”

“Who are you guys?” Sam asked them, his voice soft and confused. “Who are you and who do you work for?”


	23. My name is Sam.

“Sam, what did you just say?” Kurt asked tenderly, brushing Sam’s shaggy blonde hair out of his eyes. He looked so pained, so weakened. Whatever that woman had done to him had wreaked havoc on his body. He was still trembling lightly, his head pressed against Kurt’s knee as he pulled the car over to check on him. Jondy agreed that they were a safe distance from Manticore and they probably wouldn’t believe the deluded woman. A rouge officer was worth more to Manticore than an X4, fortunately.

They both watched the boy as he rubbed his eyes and looked at the two of them.

“Who is Sam? I need you to tell me who you work for.”

Kurt was so confused. Sam had suddenly forgotten everything about who he was, but Kurt did not understand why, however Jondy seemed to understand it. She climbed over the seat and stood in front of Sam, just outside his door. “X4-470,” she said, sharply. “You have sustained serious neuron-based torture at the hands of an enemy. You have slipped into selective amnesia by instinct. You need to allow yourself to sleep and attempt to reverse the effects, as I do not have access to the proper recovery facilities.”

Kurt gaped a little bit at her sudden change in demeanor.

“I am a superior officer, X4-470, this is an order.”

Sam laid back and Kurt slowly backed away from him, looking at the girl with questions in his eyes. “It is a defense mechanism,” she said softly. “While we were never given top-secret information that we could adequately decode, our minds were engineered with an instinct of selective amnesia, to keep the enemy from torturing information out of us. It is my immediate theory that Sam has accidentally slipped into this defense mechanism.”

“How do we get him out of it?” he asked.

“We must be patient,” she said. “Drive us back to your residence, Kurt.”

Kurt drove quickly, knowing that he was driving erratically. He was so nervous. Sam had been absolutely torn apart by that woman and now he was acting as though he didn’t remember Kurt. Was it really just some kind of defense mechanism? How could they break him free of it?

Kurt sighed in frustration.

“Be calm, Kurt,” the girl said quietly. “I know that you are frightened. I am frightened as well. I know that Manticore had a way of reversing the damages done to the mind of a soldier who had been recovered from a scenario of torture, but I also know that it involved calming the defenses somehow. He will come out of it. He has a strong will.”

“What is your designation, soldier?” Sam asked sleepily, still leaning against the car’s seat.

Jondy looked at him and then spoke. “X5-210,” she said softly. “We are transporting you to a recovery location, X5-470, just rest yourself.”

Before long, they arrived back at Kurt’s house. “Please tell your family to make themselves scarce,” she said quietly. “Do you have a secluded place we may let him rest?”

“My room,” Kurt said. “Just wait.”

He quickly went inside and avoided the frantic hugs of his family, telling them to go into the kitchen so that Sam did not see them. He told them quickly that Sam was safe but had been badly hurt and could not see any of them. He then went back to help Jondy unload Sam out of the car but she had already picked up the boy over her shoulder. It was a fantastic sight, the tiny child holding the boy twice her size.

They got Sam to the bed and laid him down. He was half-asleep, half-awake and his partially opened eyes did not seem anything like those of the boy that Kurt loved. He watched Sam with a painfully earnest expression, hoping that this was something he would come down from.

“Do you know how this was reversed at Manticore?” he asked Jondy.

She shook her head.

“I know there was a process that involved a lot of mental rest but I have no idea what that process was. Remember, Kurt, we were but pawns.”

Kurt sighed and looked at Sam. “Why did you go all formal on him?” he asked quietly.

“All formal?” she asked. “Oh, well, it seems to me like Sam has reversed back to a mindframe that existed before the escape was made. You do not want to deal with a soldier who believes that he is some kind of POW, do you?”

“No…”

Sam looked around him, slowly waking up a little bit more. “How did I end up like this?” he asked, directing the question to Jondy, not to Kurt. “Also, who is he? Why is there a kid here?”

Jondy looked at Kurt and seemed to be debating something in her head. “I want to tell him some kind of story,” she said out-loud, leaving both Sam and Kurt looking at her perplexed, “but at the same time some part of me believes that you are the key to helping him out of this mess. He has an emotional attachment to you.”

Kurt breathed in very deeply. “Are you sure?”

The transgenic shook her head. “X4-470, what does the name Sam say to you?”

“Sam?” he asked quietly. “Should I know what that name means? I don’t recall it, miss.”

Jondy frowned but continued talking to Sam. “What about the name Kurt?” she said quietly. “This is Kurt.”

Sam looked at Kurt and Kurt kept his gaze, trying to convey so much without speaking. He loved Sam. Sam had given him something that he never imagined he could have, someone to be in love with and someone to love so completely that it hurt. Sam was so very special to him. Sam was his whole world and he didn’t know how to express that in words.

“I can’t figure it out, I’m sorry,” Sam mumbled.

“What is the last thing you can remember?” Jondy tried.

Sam sat up, slowly. It was obvious that whatever Leslie had done to him had left him in a lot of pain. He looked from Kurt to Leslie and then frowned. “I remember a training exercise on the field,” he said vaguely.

“What year is it?” Jondy asked, quite an inquisition leader in her own right.

“2008,” Sam mumbled.

“He escaped in 2009,” Kurt told her softly.

“I know,” she snapped. “So did I.”

Kurt then tried his best to take matters into his own hands. He gently took Sam by the shoulders, even though doing so caused Sam to flinch. He looked into his eyes and tried to reach the person that he had slowly fallen for. “Sam,” he said clearly. “Can you remember the first time that then name and identity of Sam Evans popped into your mind? Can you remember the moment that you decided you were human.”

He felt his eyes tear up a little, recalling just how vehemently Sam had insisted that he was human in face of the insane woman’s insistence that he wasn’t.

Sam shut his eyes for a moment and Kurt wondered what was going on inside of his head.  
 _  
X4-470 sat at the end of his bunk. He knew that he would be reprimanded if he was seen by any of the guards patrolling the barracks, but for some reason, he really could not care any less. He looked down at his hands, turned them over in his lap. He was as human as the fat, sloppy guards that patrolled the hallways. He was not a waste of space or a useless creature that could be replaced by the new model._

 _He didn’t really know where the name Sam slipped into his mind. It was not the name of any of the commanding officers or any of the men and women who worked for Manticore’s varying teams._

 _It was not a name he could even remember._

 _Sam._

 _If he was one of them, he would call himself Sam. Why couldn’t he call himself Sam? He had an identity and didn’t just have to be identified by a number._

“My name is Sam,” he said slowly, testing it out. “My name is Sam.”

Sam blinked and opened his eyes again. Kurt shivered as they met his. “My name is Sam,” he said, awkwardly. “I don’t understand how that can be my name though. I n-never had a name. I never was a name. Sam was just some name that I wanted for myself, if I ever became a human. If I was ever accepted as a human, I would be called Sam.”

“Sam, you are human, more human than you know.”


	24. I love you.

He was panicking, sitting between the X5 and the human boy. They were grilling him, telling him about his past, asking questions and they continuously referred to him as Sam. The name Sam was unfamiliar and cold, but at the same time every time they said it, it spread something through his chest, especially when the boy who called himself Kurt said it. When Kurt said the name Sam, he was filled with a warmth and familiarity that soothed the ache he felt all throughout his body. He wasn’t hurting when Kurt called him Sam.

Why did just the name Sam coming from Kurt make him feel like crying? Crying was an expression of human weakness and not something that he had any familiarity with whatsoever. He had never cried in his life, had he? He was not equipped for tears and he was not going to cry right here and now.

“I need you to think about Manticore,” said the girl, the one who called herself Jondy but identified herself with the designation X5-210. “Think about Manticore Sam and while you think of it, think about the most painful moments you endured there. Think about feeling like a guinea pig, a pawn, an experiment…think about the absolute helplessness you felt.”

He closed his eyes at the insistence. All that he could really feel was helplessness.

 _He was submerged in a tank, his lungs feeling as though they were going to explode. He opened his eyes and shook his head, begging the commanding officer to let him come up for air. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hold his breath that long. He did not have the capacity to hold the oxygen that was left in his lungs any longer. Why didn’t they make their soldiers with goddamned gills if they wanted them to be able to withstand long term submersion? He needed to get out or he was going to die._

 _He hated them. He hated them. He did not understand anything about Manticore and their ideals anymore. His brain was spazzing out from lack of oxygen and he didn’t understand them but he hated them. He was just a pawn for their games. If he didn’t have the physical capabilities to do what they wanted him to do, it was his fault, not theirs. They were the ones who made him. They couldn’t accept their own failures. He was one of their many failures and they could not accept that they ever had failures._

He opened them again and shook his head. “I couldn’t breathe,” he told Jondy. “They were trying to make us develop more endurance than we physically could.”

“The tank,” she said softly, understanding what he was talking about. She looked at him and then over to the young boy, Kurt. Kurt looked a little bit terrified and Sam wanted nothing more than to calm his terror but at the same time more memories came back and flooded him.

Sam’s mind flashed back to the channel and the way he had been forced to swim it and called useless for his lack of ability.

He was terrified of water, terrified of the way it entered his mouth and filled his lungs. He was terrified of being engulfed by the blackness underneath and all around him.

“I couldn’t endure water,” he whispered, keeping his eyes closed again because the emotions were getting the best of him. He had been lying when he said he never cried. Some nights he would cry in his bunk in the barracks. He would hide underneath the thin cotton blanket and still his breath so that none of the other soldiers or heaven forbid, the men who patrolled the halls, would hear his desperate and pathetic cries. “I cried. I’ve cried.”

He remembered exactly how it felt. Soldiers were not human. Emotions were weak. He should have never cried. Crying was wrong. Crying was so wrong.

He was crying again. He felt the burn of tears forming in his eyes and reached up to wipe them away with the back of his hand. “I don’t want to be crying,” he said out loud and immediately, he found that the boy, Kurt, was wrapping an arm around him and holding him tight. He could not remember ever accepting comfort from someone before, but it felt so nice to do so. He leaned into Kurt’s side and Kurt held him close. He sighed, feeling so complete in Kurt’s arms.

“I hate to push you Sam,” the X5 said. “I just need to be able to recover your memory and I have none of the technical equipment Manticore would have to help you. You are remembering though. You made a conscious choice to escape Manticore, a few months after a rogue group of X5s escaped. You need to remember this.”

Sam tried to remember what the girl was talking about, because he knew it was vital. He knew underneath all of the lost and missing memories that he had to be able to get back to that point in time. He had to or else he could be victim to Manticore again. They had hurt him and battered him.

“I was staring out my window.”

 _The X4, who now identified as Sam, stared out the window. His barracks were on the top floor of the facility and the windows were barred, but he could see the landscape outside of Manticore. It was a long stretch of forest and if he could make it past the perimeter fence, he knew that he could lose them._

 _There would be armed guards and there would be dogs. The spotlights would be able to catch him, if he didn’t move fast enough. It was a suicide mission but living here, enduring this, that was suicide in itself._

 _The X5s had done it. They were barely children and they had done it. Sam dealt with the lingering realization that the X5s were stronger and faster but he had the advantage right now. Manticore was distracted and he was useless. He could escape. He could get out and he could make it._

 _Leaping over the fence was hardly a decision at all, it was an instinct. X4-471 took the fence in a single bound. Unlike the X5 escapees from several months earlier, he knew what he was doing. He was halfway through the woods by the time the sirens blared, the voices from far off easily heard. He had waited until the hysteria over the X5 escapes escalated and made the move when the focus was elsewhere and the time was right. He felt bullets fly past him, but they never touched him. He had made a choice long ago, which made escaping no choice at all in the moment. He was still a soldier, but he had chosen this mission for himself._

 _He was hit, once, before he got to safety, but he still never flinched, never looked back._

“I never looked back.”

Kurt smiled weakly and Sam realized that the boy had tears in his eyes too. Why was he crying? What reason did he have to be crying? Sam didn’t really understand but he knew that he was slowly recovering his memories.

“He’s coming back to you,” the little girl told Kurt. “I have faith in him. He’s recovering very fast and I think that you’re key to that recovery. He’s strong.” She looked around the bedroom and frowned a little bit. “I need to go Kurt.”

“What, why?” Kurt asked.

Sam didn’t understand what either of them was talking about. He looked at the little girl and felt a sense of familiarity, care and distance. He didn’t know how he knew her though or how he met her. He was slowly realizing that she was an X5 escapee and he felt a sort of hero complex. They were his heroes and he did admire them more than anything.

“It’s not safe here,” she said. “Sam is safe, at least for awhile, because that woman eradicated record of his existence. You’ll have to do all you can to keep him safe, but he remembers what he needs to remember and he has stated that he’s going to stay with you no matter what. I am not safe, if that woman mentions that she saw an X5 escapee. We are truly more valuable to Manticore than he is.”

She flushed and ran a hand through her short, choppy hair. “Also, I have meddled far more than I should have. If Zack ever knew what I had done...Lydecker won’t stop until he finds us or dies trying. I have to go.”

Kurt nodded slowly.

“Protect Sam for me?”

Sam frowned indignantly at her statement. How could the human boy protect him? Then he remembered Kurt’s arms around him and wondered if maybe he could. He watched, confused, as the girl turned and then quickly wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you for teaching me a little about being human Sam. I appreciate it. I hope we get to meet each other again.”

She was gone quickly, Sam feeling a distinct sense of loss with her departure. He closed his eyes and felt thet small body of the boy, Kurt, press up tightly against his. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered. “I was so scared. I love you Sam, I love you so much alright? I know you can’t remember me yet but I love you.”

“I… I love you too.” 


	25. Epilogue

Kurt watched the Seattle news with wide-eyed horror. He and Sam had heard rumors about Manticore burning to the ground and Sam had wanted to go, but transporation in between the states was at an all time level of difficulty and Seattle was one of the most broken cities in the United States. “It’s not safe,” Sam had told him, the for you in that statement being totally implied.

The pictures were brutal, images of half-human-half-animal hybrid creatures running wild in Seattle and being tormented and tortured by maverick groups of rouge transgenic hunters. The city was terrified and it was all because there was something they didn’t understand. Kurt felt his heart drop when he saw the burning crosses, the hicks crying about not letting “trannies” as they called them, into their towns and businesses.

He felt Sam come up from behind him. “You know that we have to go to Seattle,” he said, turning around and looking the other man in the eye. Sam nodded slowly. Sam knew that he had to get back there and help those like him.

Sam and Kurt had lived in relative peace for a decade. They were married, had jobs, everything, but they could never forget where Sam came from. Sam had suffered immensely in the labs of Manticore and thousands of others had been set free on a town unwilling to accept them. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t escaped,” he told Kurt, softly. “Now they’re free of that hell and walked right into a city that doesn’t want them. I mean, I’m likely the last living of my particular make but…”

“We have to go,” Kurt said softly, not even noticing the tiny sounds of his niece running up behind him.

Five year old Jenna Hudson was Finn’s daughter and she adored her uncles. She crawled up into Kurt’s lap and watched the tv for a moment, before declaring softly, “It’s not fair what those people are doin’. Everyone is the same inside.”

“You are right, Jenna,” Sam said, patting her on the head.

A moment later, Jenna was joined by her father. Finn looked at Sam and Kurt. “I knew that you guys would be watching this,” he said softly. “It’s really, it’s really that place, isn’t it Sam?”

Sam nodded slowly. “Kurt and I are going to go there,” he said softly. “I owe it to the people who were taken down by that place, you know?”

“But Sam…” Finn said, but his protests were halfhearted at the best. He knew what they had to do and he knew why they had to do it. He took the tiny child from Kurt and she crawled up onto her daddy’s shoulders. “You guys have to stay safe, alright?”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to us,” Kurt said seriously.

“Uncle Kurt and Uncle Sam are really good at making the bad things good again,” Jenna reassured her daddy with the wisdom of a child. “They always make bad things go away and they can make this bad thing go away.”

Finn nodded, slowly. “I know they can.”

The drive to Seattle took a very long time and the whole time, Sam kept brushing his fingers through his hair, trying to hide the barcode on his neck. Kurt knew that Sam was as afraid as he was of being found out. He had seen the images of transgenics strung up in makeshift lynchings and he knew it was growing more and more dangerous to be like him.

There were more people like him.

Sam was very happy in Ohio with his family. He was living a life that he had always dreamed of, but at the same time he had to think about others like him. He was the last living X4 but transgenics were swarming Seattle. He had to do this.

Just as they arrived in the city, their car was stopped at a sector checkpoint. The sector police ran over their clearance and identities and they were let past. Their car was old, a convertible that came from Kurt’s family shop. Sam slowly drove past the sector checkpoint, looking over to Kurt who gave him a smile.

“We better get gas,” he said, looking at the meter.

They rolled over to a gas station, where a tall female was servicing a motorcycle. She had dyed dark hair and Kurt couldn’t help notice the way she mastered the cycle like it was a child of hers or something. She turned around fast, faster than most people could.

“Sam, Kurt,” she whispered.

Neither the dyed hair, nor the fact that she was twenty years old at least, could hide who she was from them. She pulled her jacket tight against her body and the smallest smile graced her face. “I can’t believe it’s you guys…it’s been…”

“Eleven years,” Sam said, before pulling the X5 into a tight hug. He knew that she objected to the action, could sense it in the way that she pulled back, but he honestly care. It had been eleven years. He had always hoped that he would see the X5 that saved his life again, considering that he had not even been able to remember her when she took off eleven years ago, but she had never returned to Lima, Ohio, nor had any other positive sign that Manticore existed. He ran into a few problems here and there but it seemed Manticore stopped focusing on that one rogue X4 who got out.

The same couldn’t be said for the X5s. Jondy pulled away from Sam’s hug and smiled, shaking her head. “Eleven years,” she repeated. “I always wanted to come to Ohio again, but Zack laid down a pretty tight hold on us in the following years. He never did find out what I did…”

She looked away and smiled softly. “What have you two been doing?” she asked softly. “I can’t believe that all these years and you’re still together.”

Kurt looked at Sam, smiled and Sam could only smile back. “We stayed together,” he said. “We’re married; though Sam had to do some work a couple years ago to make sure his identity didn’t match the one he formed in high school.”

“What about you?” Sam asked.

The girl smiled again, her hands slipping into her pockets. “I went to Los Angeles and started waiting tables,” she said. “I met a couple of boys, avoided Manticore a couple of times, the usual.”

Sam put a hand on her shoulder. “Why are you here?”

“Well,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in eleven years, Sam. I haven’t seen my sister, Max, since the day we escaped, until I saw her on television just a month ago. She’s the hero of our kind and I’m finally going to be able to offer her my aid. My sister Brin’s been reindoctrinated, Tinga is dead, Zack is…well gone. Everything’s falling apart and I need to find her.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Sam said.

“Well, once again, X5-470, otherwise known as Sam, we’re in this together.”


End file.
